by Thomas Tryon
Augie chuckled, then picked up the objectionable refrain as he left the room, “Oh you push the third valve down ...”
Hiding her mirth behind the rim of her cup, Dagmar looked over the front page, which detailed how Nazi thugs all over Germany had gone on a rampage, smashing their way into the shops and homes of Jews, setting fire to synagogues, brutalizing the Jewish population. Dagmar shook her head at the thought of such violence and wondered where it all would lead. She thought of Fritz, who had learned his family’s fate at last. Trying to escape Austria, they had been betrayed, and had disappeared behind the walls of a concentration camp called Mauthausen.
When she had glanced through the rest of the newspaper she returned to her letter. Her lines were addressed to Elsie Meekum at Pitt Institute, whom Dagmar had promised to keep apprised of Leo’s progress. In the weeks since the coroner’s inquest in Putnam, when she and Elsie had frequently found themselves together, they had struck up a correspondence, having discovered that they shared an interest not only in Leo Joaquim but in other matters as well, including mulberry ware and the paintings of Renoir, and it had been between the two women, widow and spinster, that the plot had been hatched to bring an end to Leo’s stay at the orphanage. Now Dagmar enjoyed receiving Elsie’s correspondence from Pitt, and responded with news concerning their “protege,” which was how Leo had come to be regarded.
Looking back to that July day when the boy had first come to the Castle, it hardly seemed possible that so much had happened in so short a space of time: so much bad -and how much good?
There had been a great hubbub during the weeks following the tragedy. The town of Putnam, the Windham County seat, had filled up with reporters who had been drawn to the scene of the tragedy like flies to rotting fruit, and who, despite the best efforts of all concerned, from Dr Dunbar of the Joshua Society to Dagmar Kronborg, would not be denied. Even the services for the slain young man had provided grist for their mill: It had been held under the sponsorship of the German-American Bund, whose rank and file had appeared in numbers, many wearing swastika armbands in token of respect to their “fallen comrade” -Rolfe’s doing, of course. During the last rites the mother of the deceased became hysterical and had to be forcibly restrained, and one persevering photographer managed to get a dramatic shot of Joy being helped into a waiting car.
None of this had Leo Joaquim witnessed, for within hours of his arrest he had been returned to the same hospital where he had been a patient as a child. In a state of shock, he lacked all comprehension of what had taken place at the old Steelyard place, or the fact that he had been the instrument of someone’s death. At the hospital he was once more placed in the care of Dr Epstein, and there, while he waited for the inquest to begin, the same Miss Holmes sat again in the corner of his old room (or one exactly like it), smiling and nodding.
Due to his youth, the coroner’s proceedings were conducted behind closed doors, and no photographers were allowed. However, the enterprising young man who had been on hand to photograph Joy Hartsig, hysterical with grief, was also the one who had photographed the ill-fated model of the Austrian village, and (hardly believing his luck) he had gone through his negatives, culling those in which Leo appeared. His future was assured when these shots were subsequently run in a series of double-truck spreads under headings that read:
CAMPER FROLIC TURNS TO HAVOC
Friend-Indeeder Runs Amok with Hunting Knife
BUTCHER’S BOY APES LIFER-PA
Medicos Wonder — Is It Inherited?
The denouement proved an anticlimax. When the various parties involved - Doc and Maryann Oliphant, Peewee and Honey, Fritz Auerbach and Wanda Koslowski, the Abernathys, the Starbucks (Willa-Sue reliably described the moment in the office when Reece had stolen the folder from Ma’s drawer), Dr Dunbar, Supervisor Poe and Miss Meekum, some of the campers who had been present, Wally Pfeiffer in particular - had given their testimony, and Dr Epstein had taken the witness chair, no charges were filed. (The ruling cited “provocation” and “abnormal mental strain.”) Those most nearly concerned, the parents of the deceased, were not present at any time during the hearing - they were in fact not even in residence, Rolfe Hartsig having taken his wife away to a sanitarium in West Virginia.
The presiding official at the inquest had interviewed Leo in his private chambers, entreating him to put the events of that unlucky night out of his mind and not to dwell on such morbid matters. With little to look forward to other than being returned to the orphanage (with a heavy mark against him for having killed someone), Leo found it hard to oblige, for who could not think of such things? But then Dagmar and Miss Meekum had put their heads together, and before he could be returned to the Institute he had been spirited away in Dagmar’s car to the Castle. It was a likely solution to a problem that had been troubling Dagmar for many weeks. Of course, the simplest solutions were often the best. And when she was gone - she jvould be sixty-seven in January; she had some few years yet - but when she did pass on, all that was hers would be Leo’s. He would be King of the Mountain; she liked the notion of happy endings.
After the killing the camp had been shut down in short order, and no one knew if it would open again next summer. The elders of the Society of Joshua were as yet undecided as to what the future of Friend-Indeed would be. One thing seemed clear: whatever its ultimate fate, the camp would not again see Pa Starbuck.as its director. The elders having made their own private inquiry into the tragedy, he had received a stinging rebuke from his superiors and been summarily relieved of tenure. This fact had, however, been successfully concealed from the press, lest the unsavory nature of the affair rub off on the Society itself.
Indeed, before taking his final leave, Pa had been honored by a testimonial dinner at which he was presented with a gold-dipped pocket watch engraved with his initials and the date, after which he held an “impromptu” news conference. Modestly beaming, he reiterated “matters of health” as the reason for his retirement, and stated his intention of removing to Miami, where Ma, his spouse of thirty-six years, could live year-round in bathing suits and drink coconut juice - ha ha - that was a good one.
Now the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Nature Lodge stood boarded up, the diving raft had been dragged ashore against ' the winter frosts, the official camper files had been sent to the Society’s main office at Hartford, and in the dining hall mice feasted on uneaten foodstuffs, forgotten at the back of cupboards. Cobwebs were being spun nighdy in the tool crib and the Swoboda corner and upstairs, in the Marconi Radio Shop. The Buffalo Bill War Bonnet had been removed from its display case, to end up in Pa’s duffel (eventually to find its way to a similar exhibit case in Miami, where Pa would eagerly repeat the same old story to anyone who would lend an ear). As for the Hartsig Memorial Cup, its fate remained in doubt. The plaque at its base was never inscribed with the names of the Jeremians who had won it, those boys of Lucky Cabin 7, whose parents had descended on the camp en masse and hustled their sons away as fast as they could. Indeed, after the night of the last council fire the cup was not seen again at camp. (Rumor suggested that Hap Holliday had absconded with it, though nothing was ever proved.)
Fritz was living in Hartford, working for a printing company and looking forward to advancement and a raise. Of his family, no news since he had been told of their incarceration, and little hope; yet, being Fritz, he did hope. He and Wanda were seeing each other on a regular basis, she having accepted a position on the staff of a prominent specialist at Saint Francis Hospital. Meanwhile, beginning in the new year, Fritz would be looking out for Leo, who would be staying with him while studying music under Professor Pinero. Dagmar would miss having the boy at the Castle, but the bus trip was only seventy minutes; he’d be home often enough. She addressed her envelope to Elsie, inserted her pages, and licked the flap. Now for a stamp: Augie would know where they were . . .
In the music room the Mendelssohn continued as Leo fiddled away. Set out in a mulberry bowl on the Chinese shawl, a cluster of
winter cherries bobbed on their stems, marking the change in the seasons. Also marking, Leo hoped, the change in his fortunes. And he wondered how he had ever made the difficult passage from Gallop Hill in Saggetts Notch, from the stone-cold rooms of Pitt Institute, to Dagmar Kronborg’s Castle.
His present state of near-equilibrium had not been easily won. Murder — that was what he’d done: committed murder, though all he remembered, really, was the figure of Rudy looming above that of Emily, knife poised over her heart. But it hadn’t been Rudy - only Reece, dressed up like Rudy, play-acting; a little joke meant to drive Wacko nuts, a gag that had backfired and ended up with Reece dead and Leo having killed him. He didn’t like to think about Reece being dead, but it was hard not to when your mind made up pictures, your brain ticked with memories, and your fears were like so many vultures, with hard hooked beaks; or maybe crows, a flock of them with black wings beating around your head. But in time ... in time . . .
From the corner of his eye he glimpsed someone watching him from the hallway: Dagmar. How long had she been there? Did she approve of what she’d been hearing? How did it sound?
“That last needs work,” she said, marching briskly up to the piano. “You’re letting your tempo lag. Why don’t we try it together?”
She adjusted the metronome weight from allegro to allegretto, then, smoothing the folds of her skirt along her backside, she slid onto the bench, toes seeking the pedals. “Keep your mind on your notes, Leo,” she remarked wryly, for she knew that on such days as this it was hard for a boy to attend to his work, when the whole outdoors beckoned with its red-and-gold glory and the pungent smell of autumn smoke in the air. There were woods to tramp, creatures to hunt, caves to explore. But not if a boy wanted to be a great violinist, not if he wanted to play on the radio with Maestro Toscanini.
With a quick, decisive gesture, she shed her rings and dropped them into the ashtray, then poised her fingers above the keyboard. “Play for me as you would if the professor were here,” she commanded. “Now, all together, one, two, three ...”
Her joke. Leo knew.
She smiled and nodded as, together, they began to play, picking up the downbeat and setting off to a lively start, the notes and chords tumbling over one another ih their eagerness to be expressed and heard. From time to time as she played, Dagmar tucked her chin under and worked her brows, her eyes sparkling with that keen, alert pleasure that is given to those who make music and make it well.
A boy could let himself sink back into the darkness, there to be seen no more, or he could make his way up into the golden blaze of noon, into the night’s starred firmament, where the air was nimble and buoyant as the salty sea and carried you along, a feather in the wind. As the notes swelled, Leo felt a welcome lightening of spirits. He imagined himself being carried away in a kind of rapturous flight, up, up on white feathered wings, unfettered and unleashed. High above the treetops a lone bird idled in its vast blue domain, climbing higher and higher, growing smaller and smaller, until it was only a daytime star, winking there, and disappearing into the empyrean.
Icarus.