The Hanging

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Bobbie suggested drilling it for a water spout and making a fountain out of it. I thought we could stick a plaque on it and let his family use it for a headstone.”

  “Both appropriate,” I said. “But what about the other stuff?”

  “No one on campus has seen anything. No speakers, no equipment.”

  “Some of these letters sound angry.”

  She was nodding. “Making those phone calls was one of the most difficult ordeals I have ever gone through. When I told people that Park could not legally solicit or deposit funds outside the Foundation, every one of them was upset to some degree. A few of the people who sent checks were a whole lot more than just upset. I know that Park got a lot of calls, and I know that no one got any satisfaction from his response.”

  “What did he say to them?”

  “Basically, that I was full of it. He actually had the gall to ask David Dahliwahl for more money.”

  “Dahliwahl turned him down?”

  “Yes. And told him that he expected the first donation to be redirected to the scholarship fund.”

  “What did Park say?”

  “That he’d think about it.”

  She glanced at her wall clock. “I’m sorry, Maggie, but I have a meeting.”

  “Thanks. This has been very interesting.” I tapped the letters in front of me. “May I have copies?”

  “Not of the checks, of course, but the letters? For background purposes only, not for publication, why not?”

  “I may call some of these people,” I said.

  “As a favor, will you let me call them first, warn them what to expect?”

  “Sure.”

  She led me to the outer office to make copies.

  “Joan, you called your list of donors. But there could be other people he went to.”

  “I think there probably are.”

  “I strongly urge you not to wait for the Board to act.” I fished the card Thornbury had given me Friday night out of my bag and handed it to her. “You need to call the police yourself right away. For your own protection.”

  Chapter 16

  My classroom was frigid. Twenty-five students and their computers would eventually heat up the room, but in the meantime I hoped that my futzing with the thermostat would do enough to take the edge off the chill.

  I booted the classroom computer, dropped the big screen from the ceiling, and started warming up the ceiling-mounted projector. Students began filing in, shedding wet jackets and hanging them on the lighting rack I had set up in a corner for that purpose.

  At eight o’clock sharp, we began the workshop.

  Films are made to be seen, but getting them in front of an audience is tough. The filmmaker also has to be a salesman. So, before we put up each student project, I had its creator pitch it as he or she would have to do for the rest of their careers.

  We had heard the first pitch, a student named Chelsea, and offered comments, and had seen her film-in-progress. The lively discussion that followed, the critique, was interrupted when one of the most talented among my little flock, an eighteen-year-old named Preston Nguyen arrived; late for the first time that semester.

  Slammed in would better describe his entrance than merely arrived. Muttering under his breath a stream of words that generally began with F, he flung his backpack to the floor, and with a toss of his long hair, dropped into a chair.

  “Good morning, Mr. Nguyen,” I said as the room’s vibrations settled. “Nice of you to join us.”

  “I am so pissed,” he said, slouching low, arms dangling to the sides as if they were dead weights. “I worked my ass off for those assholes. Fuckers wouldn’t even give me an interview.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The assholes are attached to the TV station where you’re interning?”

  “I mean, what do they want?” He raised open palms toward the ceiling, or toward heaven, which perhaps had also let him down. “They saw what I can do. I’m better on the digital editor than anyone they have working there. Jeez, I bleed competence for six months and they say...” He let out a puff of air, dejected. “Nothing. They say nothing. I ask you, what do I have to do to get hired on?”

  “You’ve only bled for six months?” I said. “How badly do you want a TV gig?”

  Preston was a true television geek. In response, he balled a fist and tapped his heart, but he was smiling, if sadly.

  “Yeah, well, it was easy for you,” he said. “You went to some fancy film school, not,” he looked around the room with disdain, “here.”

  “I didn’t go to film school at all,” I said.

  Zeke, from his usual front row seat, looked up, challenge in his expression. “Then your dad must have been a—”

  “Dad taught physics,” I said. “I got into television the old-fashioned way.”

  “Knee pads?” some wit in the back offered.

  “I stayed open to possibilities,” I said. “I started at the bottom and made the best of an act of God.”

  “I believe it takes an act of God,” Preston said.

  “What I said was, I made the best of an act of God. I advise you to keep your eyes and your options open. Be ready to grab your moment when it comes.”

  Gesturing toward the student whose session was interrupted, I said, “Now, as a courtesy to Chelsea, let’s get back to your comments about her work.”

  Chelsea shook her head. “No, that’s okay, Miss M. I’ve got the gist of what everyone had to say and I know what I need to do next. You tell us all the time how to pitch our films, but you’ve never told us how you got started. We all assumed you fell out of film school into a great job. How’d you do it?”

  There was a chorus of similar questions. I remembered how nice it had been on rainy days when I was a kid in school to have the teacher read us a story or tell us one. I looked at my collection of sopping charges, and started telling my tale.

  “The summer after I graduated from college—”

  “What was your major?”

  “Philosophy,” I said. “I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself. My parents expected me to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t ready to commit to that. So I took a road trip. I got as far as central Kansas before my money ran out and my car died. The only job I could find was in a local dive, tending bar and waiting on tables; I’d worked as a waitress in college.

  “It didn’t take long to get to know all the town regulars. One of them, a guy named Steve, asked me one day if I could write a simple declarative sentence.”

  “Kinky.”

  “Fortuitous,” I said. “Turns out he managed the local TV station and he had just fired his writer, another regular at the bar—very regular—for showing up drunk three days in a row. Steve offered me a job writing commercials and news copy if I could start in the morning. The pay stunk—I had to keep my restaurant job to cover my rent—but it was interesting. Now and then I operated the cameras, and from time to time I combed my hair, stood in front of the camera and read the weather report. And that was how I began.”

  “Where does the act of God come in?”

  “Kansas is in the middle of Tornado Alley. Think Dorothy-and-Toto land. One morning when I was at the station, the tornado sirens went off. Steve ran in and told me we had to get to a shelter. On the way out, I grabbed a Steadicam and a recorder.”

  “You filmed the tornado?”

  “I‘ll show you.”

  I stepped into my office and retrieved one of the disks I had tucked into my bag that morning. Not confident that the new network gig would last beyond one contracted film, I was preparing to revise my video résumé because it was time to get out there and pitch myself again. One of those disks had my television debut on it.

  “Here you go,” I said, downloading the disk and putting it up on the big screen. “My first moment of fame.”

  On that very wet Kansas morning, I ran out of the station behind Steve, filming as I ran. Most of what I caught was other people running in the same direction, head
ed for the basement of the courthouse. The wind was hellacious, pushing us from behind, sending the rain horizontally into our backs. The images I shot were jerky, obviously the work of someone who didn’t know much more about the camera or how to use it beyond turning it on.

  At one point, I heard what sounded like a freight train bearing down on us, turned and saw the tornado’s funnel racing along the ground a few miles away, blowing up farm buildings and trees as it cha-cha’d toward us. I stopped running and the image became steady. My voice can be heard.

  “Holy shit, Steve, look at this.”

  He ran back to me, took the camera from my hands, put me between him and the tornado and ordered, “Describe what you see.”

  I did just that as Steve filmed the tornado, catching me in profile. Wet hair whipping my face, wet clothes clinging to my body, I just kept talking as long as he kept shooting. By that time, I had been in town long enough, working at the bar, to know just about everybody who ever felt the need for a cold one on a hot afternoon. So I could say, “Dear God, there goes Larry Kuhn’s barn. I hope he and Mary got into the cellar.” And, “That’s Tom Harco’s pickup truck parked under the Interstate overpass.” And so on.

  I fast-forwarded to a montage of clips taken from that evening’s national network news broadcasts. All three of the old majors carried our tornado footage. The network Steve’s station was affiliated with sent a reporter down from Kansas City early the next morning to interview me. My hair was done, my face was made up, and I wore a borrowed blouse, so I was somewhat more presentable than the wet creature whose image ran on television screens across the country under the banner REPORTER’S WHIRLWIND FIRST DAY.

  Still wearing the borrowed blouse, that night I became Steve’s evening news reporter, writing my own stories, reading them on air, and then working a late shift at the bar because the pay did not get much better. Before Christmas I was picked up by the Kansas City affiliate and a career was born.

  “You looked different, Miss M,” Preston offered.

  “That was over twenty years ago,” I said. “I wasn’t much older than you are now.”

  “Still,” he persisted.

  “And that was before my nose job,” I said. “My nose was okay for Kansas, but not for Dallas. I caved and had it done because Dallas offered good money. I also started using my new married name because Dallas thought MacGowen sounded perkier, less ethnic than Duchamps. If I had to do it over again, I would keep both of the originals.”

  “And you might still be working in Kansas City,” Chelsea offered.

  “There is that,” I said. “But I can think of worse fates. Here’s the lesson I hope you’re getting: pick up the camera and head out into the storm, if that’s what it takes. And don’t be too full of yourself to start at the bottom.”

  “You can say that because you shot right to the top,” Bretawny, wearing her usual camera-ready makeup, chimed in from the back.

  “Hardly,” I said. “I paid my dues. Don’t forget, I’ve been at this for over twenty years, and my show still got cancelled. So here I am, trying to get a bunch of youths who are not only wet behind the ears but soaked from head to toe to work their butts off. So, can we get back on task now? Who’s up next?”

  As the class filed out at noon, I asked Preston Nguyen to wait a moment.

  “What did I do?” he asked, guilt for yet-unnamed offenses written in his posture.

  “What you did was some very nice camera work on your project,” I said, watching his shoulders relax. “You have a natural eye.”

  He said, “Cool, thanks.”

  I told him that I would be producing a commercial film, and told him where.

  “My film partner usually brings in a couple of interns from his graduate classes at UCLA,” I told him. “But if you can work it in without interfering with your classes, I’ll hire you for one of those slots.”

  “Hire? Like for pay?”

  “Union rules,” I said. “The pay isn’t good, but you’ll get a film credit.”

  His smile started somewhere around his solar plexus and spread to encompass his entire being.

  “What will I be doing?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I told him. “Probably running errands and making coffee.”

  His face fell a little. “But I still get a film credit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” He started to bounce, walking backward now so he could watch me. “I mean, yes! Whatever, absolutely. When do I start?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know.”

  “Wow! I mean, thanks, Miss M. What should I be doing now?”

  “Probably studying, Preston. I’m going to go find lunch. I’ll let you know what’s up as soon as I know myself.”

  As he bounced off, dashing who-knows-where, I doubt he felt the rain that pounded on his head.

  Chapter 17

  I was just locking my classroom, heading off for lunch and to see if Ida had arrived, when my cell phone buzzed.

  “Maggie, I think you should get over here.” It was Lew, voice quavering, sounding upset. Behind him I could hear a cacophony of voices, several very excited people all, it seemed, talking at once.

  “What happened?” I asked, flashing on Sly and his workers and the system of scaffolds and ladders erected around his massive sculpture. “Anyone hurt?”

  “Just come and see.”

  I was only a few steps beyond the door when I felt the first whiffle of something zing past my ear; I didn’t see or hear anything. I spun—a reflex—looking for the source when the second projectile creased like a firebrand across my chin. As I dropped to shelter behind a concrete planter a third projectile hit the point of my shoulder, grazed my sweater, tearing it, slicing a path into my flesh.

  Lying on the wet sidewalk, I pulled out my phone and dialed Lew.

  He started to say my name but I cut him off.

  “I’m outside my classroom. Someone is shooting at me. Lock the gallery and don’t let anyone leave.”

  “Dear God, what—”

  “Please call campus security and 911. I’m calling Roger.”

  “Who was—”

  I heard footsteps running away toward the parking lot and ventured to peer over the planter; I saw no one. No one shot at me again, either.

  Crouching, I made my way toward the gallery and saw immediately what had so upset Lew. Spray-painted in red across both sides of the big metal double doors: SLY IS A STONE KILLER LIKE HIS MOTHER.

  I called Sly. “I’m outside the door. Let me in.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Hard to miss it, kid,” I said, snapping a photo. “Let me in, it’s wet out here.”

  His thin face was pale, his brown eyes as big as Frisbees when he cracked the door open for me. I put an arm around his shoulders once I was inside.

  It was drizzling again. I worried that any fingerprints that the graffitist might have left behind would be washed away. The choices were to open the doors wide to protect the fronts from the elements, or lock them tight in case someone with a gun was still out there. I closed the doors after me, and turned the bolt.

  The eyes of five upset youths were on me.

  “Anyone see who painted that?” I asked. There was a chorus of No ways, and promises that if they had seen the painter they would have pummeled him, or her.

  “Maggie, you got some paint on your chin,” Sly said.

  I swiped the back of my hand across the gash and it came away red.

  “It isn’t paint,” I said, dialing Roger.

  When he picked up, I said, “It’s Maggie. Someone took a couple of shots at me and sprayed some ugly graffiti on the gallery. Can you send someone with a fingerprint kit?”

  “Are you hit?” he asked.

  “Grazed twice. Can you hurry? It’s raining again and if there are prints I don’t want them to wash away.”

  “Do you need paramedics? A doctor?”

  “No. I’ll probably be able to talk Lew out of a Band-Aid and be ju
st fine. Are you coming?”

  “I’m half a block from campus now.”

  If possible, Sly’s eyes grew wider when he heard me say I was hit. I dropped the phone into my pocket.

  “It’s just a scratch, Sly,” I told him. “Do you think you could find a first-aid kit? I’m going down to the faculty lounge to clean up before Roger gets here. For a homicide detective he’s a big baby when it comes to blood.”

  I looked at my chin in the door of the microwave on the faculty lounge counter. There was just a scratch. After I daubed the blood off with paper towels, I looked at it again, daubed it again and decided that a bandage would only make it more noticeable. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped altogether.

  Sly brought me a first-aid kit. I pulled off my sweater to look at my left shoulder; already it felt stiff and sore. The shoulder of the blue shirt I wore underneath was saturated with blood. I unbuttoned it enough to pull the arm free.

  “Dear God,” Lew said, walking in at that moment. He opened the first-aid kit, ripped open half a dozen packets of gauze, made a thick compress and pressed it against the wound.

  “Sly, take over here,” he said, gesturing toward my shoulder. “Hold this. Put pressure on it.”

  Lew put a chair behind me, and I sat, suddenly feeling light-headed, reaction setting in. The first compress was quickly soaked through. Lew put together a second and told Sly to put it on top of the first one and to keep up the pressure. Then he called 911, told the dispatcher that he had already called about a shooting on campus, and now he needed paramedics at the gallery ASAP—one of the faculty had been shot.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said, thinking about Ida and her news camera showing up hot on the heels of the paramedics and that graffiti going out to the world on the five o’clock news. “Lew, let’s not make a big deal about this.”

  “We’ll see,” was his answer as he hurried from the room.

  When we were alone, I looked up at Sly. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just decided that the graffiti isn’t such a big deal.” He flicked his chin toward the bloody mess under his hands. “Not now.”