“Yes, sir.” Obediently, she sat, hands folded nervously before her while the Elf Master enjoyed himself, grilling Keith on his fund of mythical knowledge.
O O O
Keith spent the next half-hour having his brain turned inside out on every facet of mythology that he had ever heard of, and a lot that he hadn’t. The Elf Master solemnly corrected him on minor points, shook his head sadly at mistakes on major ones, and penciled little notes on the back of Keith’s carefully forged forms. Keith was frustrated, because he wanted to be alone with the Elf Master long enough to tell him about the union organizers and ask his advice.
At last, after Keith had reached a state of unbearable discomfort, the impromptu oral exam came to an end.
“I haf heard enough!” the Elf Master announced, folding the papers and putting them in his pocket. “Meester Doyle, it was most enjoyable talking to you. Mees Londen,” he stood up and took her hand, “you are a charming young lady. I approve you.”
“Does that mean you’re giving me the scholarship?” Diane asked hopefully, standing up to shake hands, and found herself towering substantially above the head of her benefactor. He appeared not to observe the discrepancy in their heights. Keith stood up, too, towering over them both.
“Yes. That is precisely vhat I do mean.”
“Oh, thank you.… Oh, Keith, I’m so sorry!” Diane rushed over to console him, and turned back to the Master to explain. “I mean I’m grateful, but I’m sorry for him, too.”
Keith made a show of looking disappointed. “Uh, yeah, that’s too bad,” as Diane expended sympathy on him, but inwardly he was cheering. The Elf Master hmmmphed to himself as he went out the door. “Caught in your own net,” he said over his shoulder to the room at large. Diane threw her arms around Keith and the door closed on them.
***
Chapter 30
When at last he was able to seek the Master out to ask his advice, the red-haired teacher nodded solemnly at Keith’s caution.
“You vere correct not to announce this generally. Very vise. Mit care, it should not become necessary to alarm the others.”
“But vhat … I mean, what do I do?” Keith pleaded.
“My suggestion is that you obtain legal advice. There is nothing you can do to discourage them by yourself. Call a counselor. Yours is not an isolated case. There must be legal recourse.”
O O O
The ad in the Yellow Pages pinpointed attorney Clint Orczas as a labor relations specialist. Keith had no trouble getting an appointment to discuss his problem.
“No fee for consultation,” Orczas said cheerfully, showing Keith into a handsome walnut paneled room lined with thick books. He had smooth dark hair slicked back over his forehead, and smooth, swarthy skin. “I don’t start charging until after we decide if you need me.” He gestured to a deep leather chair and sat down at a shiny black onyx-topped desk, tenting his fingers.
“Thanks,” Keith said. “Because I don’t have a whole lot of money.”
Orczas spread his hands. “Who does? Please, tell me your story.”
Keith described his encounter with the union organizers and handed him the court order. Orczas examined the signature closely and put the paper down with a sigh.
“That’s Arendson, all right. I’ve seen a lot of these in my day. What they’re doing is considered legally questionable, but it takes a long time and a lot of courtroom gymnastics to fight.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“I know,” the lawyer said solemnly. “But there’s a loophole that keeps allowing such abuses to go on. Ideally, you know, these unions defend the rights of their members.”
“Can you help me?” Keith asked.
“Well, probably not. Some of these cases take up to three years to resolve. By then, a lot of the businesses go under. I would have to ask you for a $5,000 retainer just to get going. It could cost as much as ten to twenty thousand dollars more.”
Keith blanched. “I can’t afford that, not in a million years. So what can I do?”
“Free advice,” Orczas said, handing back the court order. “You have two choices: beat ’em or join ’em. I’m sorry.”
O O O
“It’s not my day,” Keith complained to Rick as they sat in the first Inter-Hall Council meeting of the new year. “Well, it started out being my day, but it isn’t now.”
“Probably someone else’s day. Try the lost and found,” Rick said off-handedly while taking a huge handful of potato chips out of a bag they were sharing. “No, it’s Groundhog Day. That’s your trouble.” He stuffed the chips into his mouth and reached for more.
The Council was engaged in a huge fight over the parking lot distribution. Keith and Rick weren’t interested, and were watching the bloodshed with glee. To Keith’s relief, Rick had forgiven him for turning his coat at the fall meeting, and now offered to back him up on reversing the vote. “You understand it’s because I don’t really care, don’t you? ’Cause if I cared a damn about the library or the gym, I’d probably have broken your nose for screwing around like that.” Keith took a handful of chips and crunched them one by one.
Carl, as usual, was in the thick of the argument. Keith hadn’t seen much of him since Marcy had started going out with Enoch, which suited him fine. Nothing new was being proposed during the debate by either side. It seemed to go nowhere. To Keith it confirmed all the worst and most humorous theories about committees. Instead, he sat back in his desk and thought about Diane. He called up before him her face and figure, and the sound of her voice, her laugh as he bashed himself against the door.
“Thank you, delegates,” Lloyd Patterson said, finally getting the contenders back to their sides of the room. “We’ll take a vote on that. Now, all in favor…?”
More arguing. Keith wondered what he should do about the list the union man wanted. The last thing he wanted was to have attention drawn to the elves in any way. They were paranoid, and with reason. He was very proud of the trust they had in him. He liked them all, even the ones that didn’t like him. They had so much character, if that was the word he meant. They seemed more real than the other people with whom he interacted every day. He wished that the first thing he had ever done that they’d heard about wasn’t a speech advocating tearing down their house.
“Okay,” the chairman said, standing up. “The vote is about evenly split. No clear majority. We’ll have to get votes from the members in absentia. You know who they are. Tell ’em to get in touch with me. Any other old business?”
Keith was on his feet, arm in the air. “Doyle, Power Hall.”
“Chair recognizes Doyle.”
“Regarding the new library project?”
Patterson raised an eyebrow at him. “Something new, I hope, Doyle?”
“I would like to move that the previous ballot be set aside and the vote taken again on the measure.”
“On what grounds?”
“Well,” Keith urged, as if it was obvious. “In light of the interest shown in Gillington Library by the Historical Society, I think we have to hold off on any action for when they come through. Nobody’s interested in preserving the old gym building, so we could approve that one right away.”
“I see. Has the Society sent any guarantee of its protected status yet? We don’t want the old dud standing in place of progress if there isn’t a guarantee that they want to declare it a monument.”
“No,” Keith admitted. “I’ve been phoning, but they haven’t returned my calls.” The last time he had tried, he been handed the runaround by a secretary who tried to convince him the Director was in a meeting, when Keith was sure the guy must only be out to lunch. The delegates weren’t impressed. A few of them heckled Keith, calling for him to sit down. He tried again to make them see sense. “Look, wouldn’t you feel really stupid if we tore down Gillington just as they declared protected status for it?”
Lloyd asked him in a bored voice, “Do you move for a second vote?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Vernita, call the roll.”
O O O
In a few moments, it was all over, again. The Inter-Hall council, with the exception of Rick, now loudly in favor of the new gym along with Keith, voted precisely the same way it had the last time. Keith felt cast down. Lloyd Patterson acknowledged the count, and ordered it noted for the minutes.
“You might also be interested to know that the other voting bodies in the University are split on the subject,” he said. “I’m proud to say that we will cast the tie-breaking vote when our delegation joins the Administrative council this spring. Movement to adjourn?”
Keith left feeling lower than before. He went out the rest of that week to canvass the rest of his customers for February orders and the January receipts. Diane was working, so it seemed the most useful thing he could do with his time.
O O O
Among the Little Folk, the real estate frenzy was on. Over the weekend Keith took out three tours of little people, and all of them insisted he pass by the same piece of property he and the other two elves had found: the forested plot with the house on the hill and the stream flowing through. The place just cried out “privacy,” surrounded as it was by fields with pale blonde rows of winter wheat showing on them and a nature preserve on one side, and the river on another, and more forests and hilly fields all around. There was a tinkling little cascade from the tributary as it fell into the icy waterway, sort of a miniature waterfall, and everyone stopped for a longing stare. Keith had to admit that it would be a perfect place for the elves to live. They never saw anyone in the house or on the road, so no one remarked on Keith’s repeated presence.
A few of the older ones, openly enjoying their trip, mellowed by the wintry sunshine, forgave Keith for his recklessness, understanding now that he had been acting from ignorance, and that he was trying to amend his mistake. The collie was back during his third run, panting at them in red-tongued good humor, his breath clouding in the cold air. Keith waved out the window at it, and it barked playfully at him.
Curran, Keva and a few of the others sat huddled in the back seat for the last trip on Sunday. They had issued bitter complaints to Keith about having to hide under the tarpaulin on the trip out of town. Wisely, he put their ire down to nervousness at riding in an automobile and ignored it. Other than gripes, they were stonily silent all the way out to the rural roads, until he began to drive past the farms. Some of the old ones, who remembered having their own animals and fields, chatted among themselves in wistful undertones, too low for Keith to overhear. They never spoke directly to him.
At odd moments, he called out a sort of running travelogue, telling his passengers where they were, how many people lived in this or that town, and inquired whether or not anyone needed him to stop. There were no replies to his pleasantries. He felt as though he was talking to himself. He resented that he was no more than a taxi driver until he looked in the rearview mirror at the back seat. All of the oldsters were quiet, and one of the old ladies was weeping into a corner of her apron. Keith was touched and a little embarrassed for his now-evaporated ire. Turning back toward home, he found that he was feeling sorry for the people who had lived for forty years in a concrete cellar.
O O O
Holl was waiting just outside the wall when Keith rolled up. The old ones debarked, and Holl rode with Keith to the parking lot. “You look as though some conversation would be welcome,” he told Keith.
“Hello!” Keith said, rubbing his ears. “Is that a voice? I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going deaf. I haven’t heard so much silent disapproval since I was in fifth grade math class.”
With a nod, Holl studied the snow-covered street, pawed the puddled slush with his toe. “Those others can be trying. Come back with me. We’ll have a drink. There’s something I wish you to see.”
“Oh, no,” Keith said, remembering the little old lady and her quiet tears. He didn’t feel equipped to deal with more emotions. “Thanks anyway.”
“I insist,” Holl stated. “You need one.”
O O O
In a short while, they were seated around one of the long tables in the dining chamber with cups of spiced cider. Keith was pleased to accept one that held about eight ounces, and had evidently been made particularly with him in mind, being about half again larger than the one Holl held. He fingered the carving, which showed Holl’s favorite ivy pattern.
“It’s a gift to you,” Holl asserted. “It will wait in a place of honor until each time you come to drink with us. You’re popular. They talk about nothing else than their outings, leaving us younger ones to work on woodcrafts. I thought this last group would be the hardest, but there’s those of us who don’t want you to go away with a sour taste.”
“Not after this stuff.” Keith turned the cup around approvingly. “It’s very smooth. Not too strong, is it?”
“It’s between weak and strong,” Holl admitted. “Home pressed. You’ve been past that place again?” Keith knew which one he meant.
“Three times today.”
“We’ve kept up with the real estate news. The very size of the numbers in each advertisement have us all scared.”
“I know.” Keith sipped his cider. “Me, too. I haven’t got a hope to get a mortgage for you while I’m still in college. I don’t know what else to do.”
“That’s for later. For now, we have an order to make of power tools,” Holl said. “How shall we get them?”
“Where are you ordering them from?” Keith asked.
“Martin Tools. The address is Little Falls.”
“That’s just down the street,” Keith told him. “It’s a suburb of this town. Why don’t I just pick them up?”
“That will do nicely,” Holl nodded, refilling their cups. “You are very good to us. The Master has told me about the nosy men from the union. If we can do anything to help you avoid them, let us know.”
“I will,” Keith said fervently, remembering the rough hands of the president’s henchmen.
“I have a theoretical case to put you,” Holl continued. “What would you do if you liked something that was plainly out of your financial reach?” Holl peered at him. “Speaking theoretically, that is.”
“Oh, I don’t know. If it was that far away, I’d kiss it goodbye.”
“But if you truly wanted to have it, come what may?” Holl pressed him. “A very attractive purchase, one that many people would want to possess as well. If it meant everything to you.”
“I’d see if the owner would take a down payment,” Keith said promptly, joining in the spirit of Holl’s question, and trying to imagine a thing of his dreams, something that would tempt even the thrifty Holl. “Before anyone else could sweep it out from under me. I could secure it that way, and then I’d figure out some way to take out a loan. Sell the family jewels. Steal candy from babies.”
“Ah.” Holl said meditatively. “The elders think down payments are too modern. In their day, as they are so fond of telling me, you bought only what you could pay for on the spot with cash, truck or hard work.”
“Things were cheaper in their day,” Keith moaned. “Now trying to pay up all at once takes a miracle.”
O O O
The phone rang and rang at the Historical Society office. Keith counted sixteen burrs before the secretary picked it up. “Hello, Historical Society.”
“Hello? My name’s Keith Doyle and I just want to know.…”
“Just a moment please,” she said pleasantly, and put her hand over the phone. Her mouth twisted sourly. “Chuck, it’s that kid again.”
Charles Eddy, director of the Midwestern Illinois Historical Society, barely looked up from the Chicago Tribune crossword puzzle he was doing. “He must think this office is full of self-righteous little old ladies running around inspecting hou
ses. We haven’t made the decision yet. I don’t know when we’re making the inspection on which the decision will be based. Other matters take priority.” What Eddy meant was when the inspector came back from vacation, and when the departmental Buick was back from the shop, but the secretary couldn’t say that, and she knew it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Doyle,” she told the receiver. “We will most certainly be in touch with you when anything is happening. Yes. Thank you for calling.” She put down the receiver. “Whew!”
Eddy smiled, filling CHRONICLE in six down for “historical account.” “Perhaps we should hire him. I don’t have the energy to make that sort of fuss anymore.”
O O O
February and most of March passed by. Keith was busy, sandwiching his schoolwork and the Master’s classes with sales sweeps to increase the Hollow Tree customer list. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being followed on his rounds, but he said nothing of his suspicions to anyone but Holl and the Elf Master. All the rest of his available time was spent with Diane.
He would have considered the rest of the school year perfect, if it hadn’t been for his worries about time running out on the library. The Historical Society, after much pursuit by Keith, had promised to take the matter up no later than early May, and with that Keith had to be content. He knew he was pushing it with them, but profits weren’t rolling in as quickly for Hollow Tree as he hoped. The elves that were making the merchandise began to look tired, and Keith avoided asking them to hurry any more.
On the profit side of the ledger, there were more of them making things. After Keith’s spate of tour-guiding, a substantial number of the oldsters began to participate. Holl had reported to him that they were still talking as if the Big Person was selling them out, but they were working harder than any youth, and with more experience. In some cases, centuries more, Keith suspected. He was delighted. And the union seemed to have backed off from harassing him.
The semester broke for Easter vacation, and the students vanished from campus like smoke in the wind. In spite of their concern for their home, the elves still insisted on presenting Keith with his commission check before he left for the holiday break. A glance at it assured him that it was enough to pay for next semester’s books and fees. “Say, we did really well this month.”
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