The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  “Why did you wave to her?” Carlin shook her head. “I wouldn’t bother.”

  “She’s not as bad as she seems.”

  “Some people are worse than they seem. Harry McKenna, for instance. I think he’s guilty of something. If nothing more, he knows what happened to Gus. It’s disgusting how he gets to go on with his life as though nothing happened.”

  “Maybe.” They had cut through Mrs. Jeremy’s yard in order to take the fastest route to the far meadow. “Maybe not.”

  Now they made their way through the tall, brown grass, taking the path where the thornbushes grew. The gravediggers had been at work earlier, for the earth was frozen and it had taken three men quite some time to break ground. A small number of mourners had gathered at the graveside; faculty members who felt it was only civil to pay their respects. A pile of dirt had been deposited outside the fence and icy clods littered the path.

  “I’ve been thinking about leaving Haddan,” Carlin told Abe.

  Getting out of Haddan seemed like a fine idea to Abe, especially as he was forced to watch Betsy, who was standing between Eric Herman and Bob Thomas. She had on the black dress she’d worn when she’d come to his house and stayed the night, but today she wore sunglasses and her hair was combed back and she looked entirely different than she had on that night. The priest from St. Agatha’s, Father Mink, a large man who was known to cry at funerals and weddings alike, had arrived to consecrate the ground, and the circle of mourners stepped back to accommodate his girth.

  Abe watched as those in attendance bowed their heads in the pale winter light. “Maybe I should be the one thinking about leaving.”

  “You?” Carlin shook her head. “You’ll never leave here. Born and bred. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got special permission to be buried right in this cemetery, just to stick it to the Haddan School.”

  There was no way Abe was going into that cemetery, not today and not when he was ready for his final resting place. He preferred to meet his maker out in the open, as the woman buried out at Wright’s farm had, and he’d pay his respects right out here in the meadow as well. “I bet I’m gone before you are.”

  “I don’t have to make bets,” Carlin said. “Miss Davis left me money, enough to cover all of my school expenses.”

  The instructions in Miss Davis’s will were absolutely clear. Her savings, wisely invested by that nice Mike Randall over at the 5&10 Cent Bank, were to be used in a fellowship program for students in need, providing funds each semester that ensured the recipient would not have to work and would also be free to travel during vacations. Miss Davis had stipulated that Carlin Leander was to be the first beneficiary of this award; all of her expenses would be seen to until the last day of her senior year. If she wanted clothing, or books, or a semester in Spain all she must do was write up a request and present it to Mike Randall, who would process the check and forward any cash that she needed.

  “I have nothing to worry about financially.” Carlin secured the green scarf around her throat. “If I stay.”

  Last week Carlin had turned fifteen, not that she’d told anyone, or felt she had anything to celebrate. Today, however, she didn’t look more than twelve. She had the blank expression of disbelief that often accompanies the first shock of bereavement.

  “You’ll stay.” Abe was looking at the little stone lamb, which had been festooned with a garland of jasmine.

  “Miss Davis told me that people bring flowers here for luck,” Carlin said when she noticed his gaze. “It’s a memorial for Dr. Howe’s baby, the one that was never born because his wife died. Every time a child in town is sick, the mother presents one of those garlands to ask for protection.”

  “I never heard that one, and I thought I’d heard them all.”

  “Maybe you never had anyone to protect.”

  When Carlin went on to the cemetery for the service, Abe stayed where he was for a while, then turned and retraced their path through the meadow. Father Mink’s voice was harsh and mournful and Abe had decided he would prefer to hear birdsongs in memory of Miss Davis, who, no matter how ill, had always made certain to set out suet and seed.

  His ears were ringing with the cold and he still had to get back to the church, where he’d parked his car, but he found himself heading in the opposite direction. It made no sense, he should have stayed away from the school, and yet he kept on through the meadow. It was a long, slow trek and he was freezing when he finally reached the quad. There were starlings perched in the trees, and because of the thin sunlight, the rose trellis outside St. Anne’s was filled with birds. Abe couldn’t see them, but he could hear them, singing as if it were spring. He recognized the chirrup of cardinals as well, and the black cat also heard the call. It was poised beside the trellis, head tilted, mesmerized by the pair of birds nesting there.

  There might be another black cat with one eye in Haddan, but it wouldn’t be wearing the reflective collar Abe had sprung for at Petcetera in Middletown Mall last week. Helen Davis’s cat and his were definitely one and the same. If it hadn’t shown up at his door, Abe would have been happy to be alone, but now things were different. He’d gotten involved, buying collars, worrying. Now, for instance, he found he was actually pleased to see the wretched creature, and he called to it, whistling as he would for a dog. The birds flew away, startled by the tinkling of the bell on the new collar, but the cat didn’t glance over at Abe. Instead, it walked in the direction of Chalk House, navigating over ice and cement, not stopping until it crossed the path of a boy on his way to the river where a free-for-all game of ice hockey would soon begin. It was Harry McKenna who gazed down at the cat.

  “Move,” he said roughly.

  Harry had always felt the need to excel. It made perfect sense that he’d surpassed those fools who’d thought themselves so brave, trapping helpless rabbits on the night of their initiation. He had chosen the black cat instead, and therefore had in his possession a souvenir far more original than a rabbit’s foot, a memento he kept in a glass tube taken from the biology lab. By now, the yellow eye had turned as milky as the marbles Harry used to play with; when he shook the tube, it rattled like a stone.

  On his way to play hockey, Harry knew he was finished with Haddan; he was as sure of it as he was certain whatever team he played on would win. The future was all he was interested in. He’d been granted early admission to Dartmouth, yet he sometimes had nightmares in which his final grades rearranged themselves. On such occasions, Harry awoke sweating and nauseated, and not even black coffee could separate him from his dreams. On these mornings, he grew nervous in ways that surprised him. The slightest thing could set him off. The black cat, for instance, which he came upon every once in a while. Although impossible, the cat seemed to recognize him. It would stop in front of him, as it did on this January afternoon, and simply refuse to move. Harry would then have to shoo it away, and when that wasn’t effective, he’d threaten it with a well-aimed book or a soccer ball. It was a disgusting animal and Harry felt he really hadn’t done it much harm. Its owner, that nasty old Helen Davis, had spoiled it more than ever after the incident. The way Harry saw it, the cat should probably be grateful to him for ensuring it be granted a soft life of pity and cream. Now that Miss Davis was gone, the cat would probably follow her lead and good riddance to both of them, in Harry’s opinion. The world would be a better place without either one.

  The black cat did seem to have a surprisingly long memory; it peered up at the boy through its one narrowed eye, as though it knew him well. From where he stood, Abe could see Harry chase off the cat with a hockey stick, shouting for it to stay the hell away, but the cat didn’t go far. Cruelty always gets found out in the end; there’s simply no way to run from all that you do. Frail and inadequate although this evidence might be, it was all the proof Abe needed. On this cold afternoon when the starlings had all flown away, he had found the guilty party.

  THE DISAPPEARING BOY

  WHAT THEY HAD PLANNED WAS very different, but pla
ns often go awry. Look at any house recently built and it will always be possible to spy dozens of errors, in spite of the architect’s care. Something is bound to be off kilter: a sink installed on the wrong wall, a floorboard that squeaks, walls judged to be plumb that simply do not meet at the proper angle. Harry McKenna was the architect of their plan, which, when it began, consisted of nothing more than intimidation and fear. Wasn’t that the root of all control, really? Wasn’t it the force that obliged even the most unruly to adhere to rules and regulations and join in the ranks?

  August Pierce had been a mistake from the start. They’d seen it before. Boys who liked to play by their own rules, who’d never been members of any club; individuals who took some convincing before they learned there was not just strength in numbers, but lasting power as well. That was what pledging was all about, learning a lesson and learning it well. Unfortunately, Gus never cared about such matters; when forced to attend meetings, he wore both his black coat and an expression of disdain. There were those who claimed he kept a set of headphones on, hidden by the collar of his coat, and that he spent his time listening to music instead of jotting down the rules the way other freshmen did. And so they set out to teach him his place. Each day they piled on both work and humiliation, forcing him to clean toilets and sweep the basement floor. This hazing, meant to initiate him into a code of loyalty, backfired; Gus dug in. If an upperclassman demanded he return trays in the dining room or collect dishes, he simply refused, which even the freshmen at Sharpe Hall and Otto House knew wasn’t done. He would not share homework or notes, and when he was told his personal hygiene did not live up to Chalk standards, he decided to show them what filth really meant. From then on, he would not change his clothes, or wash his face, or send his laundry out on Wednesdays. His hygiene suffered further when several boys thought it would be a good lesson to turn off the water while he was in the shower. The upperclassmen waited for him to tear into the hallway, shampoo burning his eyes; they had their towels twisted for strategic hits on his bare flesh. But Gus never came out of the bathroom. He stood in the shower for a good half hour, freezing, waiting them out, and when they finally gave up, he finished washing at the sink and refused to shower from then on.

  Despite this harassment, Gus had discovered something about himself that he hadn’t known before: he could take punishment. To think that he of all people had strength was laugh-out-loud funny, although when it came down to it, he might just be the strongest man in town, for all he’d survived. The other freshmen at Chalk wouldn’t consider saying no to their elders and betters. Nathaniel Gibb, who had never had anything to do with alcohol before, had so much beer poured down his throat through a tube that farmers on Route 17 used to force-feed geese and ducks, that he’d never in his life be able to smell beer without vomiting. Dave Linden also refused to complain. He swept out Harry McKenna’s fireplace every morning, even though soot made him sneeze; he ran two miles each day as the seniors insisted, no matter how dreadful or damp the weather, which was why he’d developed a rumbling cough that kept him up far into the night, leaving him to sleep through his classes, so that his grades fell dramatically.

  It was odd that no one had figured out what was going on at Chalk House. The nurse, Dorothy Jackson, never suspected anything, in spite of the alcohol poisoning she’d seen over the years, and all the freshmen plagued by insomnia and hives. Duck Johnson seemed easy enough to fool, but Eric Herman was usually such a stickler, how was it that he hadn’t noticed something amiss? Was he only concerned if his own work was interrupted? Was silence all he asked for, damn what else happened on the floors above him?

  Gus had expected some measure of assistance from those in charge, and when Mr. Herman refused to listen he went to speak to the dean of students, but soon enough he understood he wouldn’t get far. He’d been made to sit waiting in the outer office for close to an hour, and by the time the dean’s secretary, Missy Green, had ushered him in to see Thomas, Gus’s hands were sweating. Bob Thomas was a big man, and he sat impassively in his leather chair as Gus told him about the nasty traditions at Chalk House. Gus sounded pitiful and wheedling even to himself. He found he couldn’t bring himself to look Thomas in the eye.

  “Are you trying to tell me that someone has assaulted you?” Bob Thomas asked. “Because, the truth is, you look fine to me.”

  “It’s not like being beat up on the street. It’s not an all-out attack. It’s the little things.”

  “Little things,” Bob Thomas had mused.

  “But they’re repeated, and they’re threatening.” To himself he sounded like a spineless tattletale from the playground. They threw sand in my face. They didn’t play fair. “It’s more serious than it sounds.”

  “Serious enough for me to call a house meeting and have all your fellow students hear your complaints? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I thought this charge would be anonymous.” Gus realized that he stank of nicotine and that he had half a joint hidden in his inside coat pocket; in stepping forth to make this accusation, he might be the one who was expelled. Definitely not what his father had in mind when sending him to Haddan.

  “‘Anonymity most often points to a lack of courage or a flawed moral compass.’That’s a quote from Hosteous Moore from the time he was headmaster here and it’s a sentiment I second. Do you want me to go to Dr. Jones with this information? Because I could. I could interrupt him, even though he’s at an educators’ meeting in Boston, and I could bring him back to Haddan and I could tell him about these little things, if that’s what you want me to do.”

  Gus had been the loser in enough situations to know when a fight was pointless. So he kept his mouth shut; he certainly didn’t tell Carlin anything for if he had, she would surely have gone running to Dr. Jones, probably more indignant about all those rabbits killed over the years than anything else. She would have wanted to do his fighting for him, and Gus could not have tolerated that. No, he had a better plan. He’d managed to best the Magicians’ Club. He would complete the impossible task Dr. Howe had long ago set forth for his wife.

  It was Pete Byers who told him it could be done. Pete knew a bit about roses because his wife, Eileen, was a superior gardener. Even Lois Jeremy phoned every now and then for advice concerning a no-pesticide method to remove Japanese beetles (a spray of water and garlic was best) or a remedy that would remove toads from her perennial beds (welcome them, was the answer, for they’ll eat mosquitoes and aphids). In June, blooms of the spectacular Evening Star grew right outside the Byers’s bedroom window with a silver color that made it appear the moon had been caught in their backyard.

  Pete was merely a helper in the garden, there to spread mulch and plant seedlings. Thumbing through a horticulture magazine only days earlier, trying to figure out the fertilizer situation, he’d been amazed to discover that a piece Eileen had submitted on her favorite topic, white gardens, had been published. That she’d done so without telling him had shocked Pete; he’d never thought of Eileen as having secrets, as he did. He’d read the article carefully and so he remembered how Eileen had noted that Victorians often filled their gardens with white flowers precisely because they liked to amuse one another with the exact trick the boy had been searching for.

  Gus let out a whoop when he heard the transmutation was far from impossible; he leaned over the lunch counter to grab Pete and give him a bear hug. Each day afterward, Gus stopped by to check if his order had arrived, and at last, on the day before Halloween, Pete handed him the aniline crystals.

  That night, Gus went to the graveyard to calm his nerves and think about all the magicians he’d seen with his father. What they’d all had in common, the mediocre and the transcendent alike, was confidence. Up in the tall elm, the crow called out its disapproval at Gus’s slouching figure. A bird such as that was far better at sleight of hand than Gus would ever be, swift as a thief. Still, Gus knew the most important attributes were always invisible to the naked eye, and he was practicing silence and
patience when Carlin Leander, who’d been avoiding him for weeks, came walking along the path.

  Gus should have remained silent, but instead he let his pain out in a blast of anger. After they’d argued, and he’d climbed over the iron fence, an odd calm came over him. It was after midnight when he returned to Chalk House, and the others were waiting. It was the hour of tricks and deep resentments, the time of night when people found it difficult to fall asleep even though the village was quiet, except for the sound of the river, which seemed so close by anyone from out of town might have imagined its route followed Main Street.

  Gus went to Harry’s room on this, his pledge night. The boys formed a circle around him, certain that by morning Gus Pierce would be gone; his initiation a failure, he’d either go of his own free will or be expelled when the proper authorities found the marijuana Robbie and Harry had stashed on the top shelf of his closet. Either way, he’d soon be consigned to the evening train and Haddan history. But before he left, they had a surprise waiting for him, a going-away present of sorts. They had no idea that Gus had a surprise of his own. Although Harry’s room was overheated, Gus wore his black coat, for the white flowers he’d bought at the Lucky Day were concealed within. He believed his father would have been proud of his style, for he had rehearsed until he was able to pluck the roses from his coat with a flourish worthy of a professional. The blooms were luminous in the darkened room, and for once those idiots Gus had to live with, those fools who took so much pleasure in humiliating him, fell silent.

  It was a long and beautiful moment, quiet and sharp as glass. August Pierce spun away from his audience, quickly sprinkled the aniline over the flowers, then he wheeled back to face his tormentors. There, before their eyes, the roses turned scarlet, a shade so alarming that many in the room thought immediately of blood.

  No one applauded; not a single word was said. The silence fell like a hailstorm, and that was when Gus knew he had made an error, and that success was the last thing he should have tried to achieve. In the light of Gus’s small triumph, something poisonous had begun to move through the room. If Duck Johnson really considered that night, he might recall the quiet in the house; he would remember there had been no need to announce curfew, and although that was rather unusual, he was ruminating about problems with the crew team—lack of leadership, lack of spirit—and he took no notice. Eric Herman heard them later on, there were footsteps in the hallway and urgent, hushed voices; if pressed he would have to admit he felt annoyed, for there never seemed to be peace and quiet at Chalk House, even after midnight, and he had work to do. Eric turned up his stereo as he graded papers, grateful to at last hear nothing but cello and violin.