The Paper Chase

by John Osborn

  He walked the center aisle until he stood in the pit between the first seats and the lectern. He reached up into the darkness and touched the lectern’s smooth wooden side. He crept up the side stairs and stepped onto the stage.

  He was standing in Kingsfield’s place. He gripped the stand, expecting some kind of special force, some magical charge, to whip through his fingers and repel them. All he felt was the old wood and the grooves worn by Kingsfield’s fingers. Could that be all, he thought? Could anyone come and stand here? He wished the lectern could talk. God, it must know the secrets of Kingsfield. He could not believe that the wood was inanimate. It must help Kingsfield. There must be secret buttons hidden in it. Did Kingsfield feel nothing more than this when he stood here?

  His hearing had increased-the tiniest noise rebounded to him, coming to rest at the lectern. He heard a shade swing softly against a window top and the faint whirr of the electric clock. He looked out over the black classroom. Where was his seat? How far to the left? How many spaces between his seat and the wall? He could not find it. His sense of direction was thrown off by the unfamiliar vantage point.

  The classroom looked almost sinister. Because of the darkness, Hart wondered? The curving benches, spreading out below him, seemed like the ribs of some sleeping beast, immense and forbidding, lying at his feet but ready to spring up-a serpent like animal, coiled in faint red circles. He smiled, thinking the red was merely the bench tops, but the smile was forced and hollow.

  He felt an overwhelming desire to say or do something. Why the hell should only Kingsfield and the old judges leave their marks on this room? He wanted to shout. What if the beast heard him and awoke? What if it tried to encircle his high point and devour him? He felt confident from his perch, he could guard and watch all sides, throw down the mountain anything the beast might set against him. Instinctively, Hart looked quickly to his right and left, to the stairs that led down toward the beast’s resting place. He gripped the lectern harder, forcing his fingers into the grooves. The lectern was strong and steady: a perfect breastplate to hold back the curving serpent.

  A sound interrupted him. The light flowing from the tiny window in the door blinked out and then on. Had the beast wakened? Was this the first onslaught? Or was it Kingsfield, come to ferret him out of the throne? He tried to bring himself back to reality. He was merely standing in a classroom. There was no beast. Kingsfield was home in bed. He was just standing at the lectern of a dark classroom and in a few minutes he would leave and walk back to the dorm.

  Another sound ricocheted off the walls and reflected to the lectern. Someone was in the hall. Something was in the lecture hall with him. Someone, Hart told himself. He looked at the curving ribs of the beast. Benches, he said to himself And then the classroom was filled with light. For an instant it blinded him and he fell back, toward Kingsfield’s small door, whirling in the light, losing direction. In the next minute his eyes had cleared. He saw the classroom: papers lying in the aisles waiting for the janitor to come in the morning and sweep, in the corner a contracts book forgotten, and behind him, merely the dull dusty blackboard and the paintings.

  At the back of the room, standing at the light switch, was Ford.

  Hart jumped from the stage and ran back to him.

  “Jesus,” Ford called to him as he ran, “you’re white as hell.”

  “I know,” Hart panted. “You took me by surprise.”

  47

  IT WAS after ten and though it was Saturday night, the night of Kevin’s party, the dorm was alive with the sound of typewriters and students pacing. Throbbing with the beginnings of a paranoid attempt to catch up and master all the material that had slipped by.

  Hart threw his books down on his desk and looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. The party was sure to be at least half over. Reluctantly he put on a sweater, looked once in the mirror, checked to see if his wallet was in his hip pocket, and went to Ford’s room.

  Ford was lying on his bed.

  “Goddamn it,” Hart said, flicking on the light switch. “It’s ten-thirty. Let’s go.” Ford groaned and buried his head in his pillow.

  “Let’s go,” Hart said again. “We’ve already missed most of it.”

  “I’m not going,” Ford said into the pillow.

  “Oh yes you are,” Hart said. He pulled the pillow from under Ford’s head.

  “No,” Ford said. “No one is going.”

  “I took him the notes,” Hart shouted. “You can go to the party with me.”

  “I can’t,” Ford said. “I’ve tried to do things for Kevin. He screws up my mind. I’d go if other people were going. Don’t you understand, I’ve got to keep my head together.”

  “Some lonely fucker will show up,” Hart said. “Someone always goes to parties. Other people will be there.”

  “No,” Ford said slowly. “No one is going to go.”

  “Come on,” Hart pleaded.

  But Ford didn’t move.

  Kevin closed the bedroom door. He knew the party wasn’t just for the two of them. He knew that Asheley had planned for a lot of people. He could tell by the candies lying in the silver bowls. By the Coke and the decorations.

  He was in a trance, not realizing how he moved, how his body connected with his thoughts. His knees hit the bed and he sat. He couldn’t go back out and he knew he should. He knew he should drink some wine with Asheley and pretend that everything was all right, and he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t tell Asheley about the classroom, and the casebooks, and the study group. He couldn’t tell her about the mixer, and Moss, and the girl. About flunking his practice exams, and not having an outline. Asheley didn’t understand those things.

  It’s just a game, he told himself, and went to the closet and got the rifle. He laid it on the bed and opened the bureau drawer. Stuffed into a sock he found the shells. He took them out and rerolled the socks.

  He heard Asheley in the kitchen. That would be the cake. She would be lighting the candles. She’d come smiling. Bring the cake right into the bedroom to cheer him up. Instinctively, he backed toward the window, away from the door.

  Jesus, Jesus. It was all a game.

  From the window, he saw couples walking hand in hand. Car lights, lovers, trees. And far out, to the right, just the top of Langdell. The view seemed to have a power of its own. It knocked him back from the window, toward the door. He fell, leaned against the bureau, and extended both his arms. He held the gun at arm’s length so that the barrel pointed at him, so that the tip rested on his forehead.

  The kitchen door vibrated. Asheley was backing through it and shielding the cake. He closed his eyes.

  And then Hart’s running. He’s running just to move. He’s running like he was back in high school, in a long easy lope, skimming along, looking out ahead, planning each step in advance, jumping in and out of the shadows that the moon lays down from the top of Langdell.

  The rain has left the paths coated, and they reflect the light. It looks as though the paths have ice on them, as if he’s an ice skater, sliding along beside the big stone building.

  He cuts through the faculty driveway, runs along beside the steel fence with points on it, and beyond he sees the buildings, lights on even though it’s late, and a law student in each window. But Langdell is dark: stretching up over all the other buildings, a black block, holding up the moon.

  It gets easier each step he takes. He has that first wind and he runs like a touring car on a mountain road. He sees people every now and then. Old ladies pretending they’re looking into the dark store windows but really trying to melt into the storefronts because they’re scared, seeing a boy running this way in the night.

  He’s run to the end of the side streets and onto the avenue. There’s traffic but he doesn’t slow down. He leaves the sidewalks, gives up trying to slip through the groups of high school students walking three abreast. He doesn’t slow down. He goes right into the middle of the street, dodging the cars. They honk at him. They sc
reech to a stop and let him pass. Car windows are rolled down and he hears screams: “Motherfucker, get out of the road.”

  He’s back in the side streets, along the sidewalks and the parked cars, under the trees that dip down from the little yards. Up ahead, he sees Kevin’s apartment building, looking larger than it is against the small frame houses. He pants up to the door, and stops, breathing hard, getting control of himself. And then he rings the bell.

  Just when he’s about to ring again, the buzzer comes alive, and he throws the door open and starts to climb the stairs.

  Asheley stood in the door. Hart stopped four feet away and leaned against the banister. It was absolutely quiet: just the two of them staring at each other on the top of the stairs.

  “I guess I missed the surprise,” Hart said.

  “There isn’t any party.” Her voice came low and soft, a fog floating around him.

  “Could I just say hello to Kevin?” he said. “I’d like to wish him happy birthday.” He began to move toward her, trying to smile.

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea,” Asheley said. “Kevin’s not feeling well.”

  “Is it the flu? Everyone gets the flu,” Hart said.

  “It’s not the flu,” she said.

  He heard a moan. It trickled out around Asheley from the apartment beyond. A low whining gurgle coming from the very bottom of the throat.

  She turned and Hart knew she was going to shut the door. She backed through it, rocked against it, so that when the door closed her weight would fall on it. A woman in a trance. Then the groan came again and she hesitated.

  Hart pushed through the open space. Ribbons hung from the center of the room. On the coffee table the little silver bowls were filled with bright candies, untouched. A record hung from the spindle, waiting to be pushed down.

  Hart walked through the ribbons and into the hall. He heard hard breathing and followed the sound to the bedroom.

  He saw a photograph of Asheley and a set of brushes on the bureau. His eyes moved to the bed, rumpled and empty. Then he saw Kevin lying on the floor, his arms thrown over his head and his legs spread apart. Blood oozed from the corners of Kevin’s mouth, trickling down his cheek into the rug.

  “Leave him alone,” Asheley said from the door. Her voice was like compressed air, corked and ready to explode.

  “Leave him alone,” she said again, this time a little higher, a little more shrill. Hart took a step away from Kevin. He couldn’t leave. He wavered back and forth in the middle of the room, with Kevin at his feet.

  “He tried to kill himself. I stopped it. I had to. I’m having a baby and he tried to kill himself,” she said. “I didn’t hurt him. He’ll be all right.”

  She walked slowly across the room to the other side of the bed. Her stomach bulged as she bent down but the action was graceful and slow. When she straightened, she was holding a rifle. Hart watched silently. She leaned the rifle in against her belly, the barrel pointing up, slipped the bolt back with a dull thud, and then slammed it forward. A shell popped over her arm and fell on the bed.

  “You would have done the same thing,” she said. “I had to and I did it. I’m going to have a baby.” She dropped the rifle. It bounced on the bed, coming to rest quietly on the pillow.

  “Take it. I don’t want it in the house.”

  “I can’t,” Hart said.

  “Please. Take it and leave.”

  He picked the rifle up. He didn’t know how to hold it and tucked it under his arm like a casebook.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “There isn’t anything to be sorry about,” she answered quietly. “Thanks for coming. You were the only one who did.”

  48

  HART AVOIDED all the major streets. He kept the gun close to his body, running down the inside of his arm. The barrel stuck out below his hand and he thought the people he passed would call the police.

  He walked to Susan’s.

  She opened the door for him, wearing a long brown dress gathered at the neck in a yoke. He stumbled past her, tripped on the rug, and collapsed on the couch.

  Later, she put him in the car, put the seat back so it formed a kind of bed. He couldn’t see anything lying that way and gradually the swaying of the car rocked him to sleep.

  He was in front of the fire, wrapped in two blankets, listening to the waves.

  “This was my grandmother’s house,” Susan said. “She only came here for a weekend a year, and it got ruined. There are flagstones under the grass.”

  He slid down into the blankets and closed his eyes

  “It’s fantastic,” he said quietly.

  “Upstairs, in my grandmother’s old room, the windows wrap around three sides and you can look along the beach. We used to own the house on the right, but we sold it after she died.”

  “The grandmother?” he said. “Yes. She kept this house to remind her of her husband, but she wouldn’t sleep in the bed. Remember? The room with windows on three sides? That was their bedroom and she didn’t sleep in it after he died because it made her sad.”

  She pushed the blanket down between the sofa and his body so that it hugged him.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “I’m going to sleep,” she said.

  “Are you going to sleep in the room with windows on three sides?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just wondered.”

  “Well, I am.”

  He heard her walking away.

  “Susan, this is really nice of you. I needed this.”

  “I could tell.”

  “Susan?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to think this is going to start me back trying to organize us.”

  “It’s five. It’ll be light soon. Go to sleep. You look like hell.”

  He heard the door close. The fire sputtered and he fell asleep.

  He woke and found her sitting in front of him. Light streamed in the windows. He saw the rug was blue and there was a blue sky outside.

  “Do you feel like breakfast?” she asked.

  “I’ll make it,” he said. “Really, don’t make it.”

  “It’s made,” she said. It was on a tray beside her.

  He took her hand and cradled it under him, not wanting her to move. She let him hold it for a minute and then pulled away.

  She came back around the front of the sofa, holding the rifle.

  “Let’s eat on the porch,” she said, picking up the tray in one hand and cradling the rifle in the other.

  49

  O’CONNOR DRONED on and on. He seemed to think that Springstead v. Nees held the secret of consideration. It wasn’t that O’Connor was saying anything silly. In fact he was making a pretty good analysis. But he’d lost track of time and the importance of finishing a certain number of cases today so that they wouldn’t have to do them tomorrow. And he didn’t seem to realize that Kingsfield was not in a good mood.

  Ford fiddled with his pencil and looked at Hart’s empty assigned seat. Hart had been the first student Kingsfield had called on during the hour. And the fact that Hart was absent seemed to have disturbed the professor. Ford wondered if he should have said something. Perhaps told Kingsfield that Hart was in the hospital.

  Kingsfield looked down at O’Connor and the class tensed, moved back into their seats, anticipating the push that was going to surge from the lectern. Then Kingsfield checked the seating chart and the class wavered because they didn’t understand.

  “Mr. Bell,” Kingsfield said. “What do you think of Mr. O’Connor’s argument?”

  Bell looked up. “What?” he said. “I think what?”

  “I asked you what you thought of O’Connor’s argument,” Kingsfield said. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  O’Connor braced.

  Bell stumbled. He had been thinking about property and had not heard O’Connor’s argument.

  “I didn’t ask you for an analysis, Mr. Bell. I just want you to say if you found M
r. O’Connor’s argument convincing.”

  The words released Bell. “I don’t find anything Mr. O’Connor says convincing,” Bell said.

  There was suppressed laughter from the class. It was the first time someone, other than Kingsfield, had consciously insulted a student during a class period. The class was unsure how to react and waited for guidance.

  “Mr. O’Connor,” Kingsfield said. “I don’t think everyone is impressed by the importance of what you’re saying.”

  50

  THE PORCH was made of heavy flagstones, set in sand, and surrounded by a rock wall that stretched out from the side of the house in a half-circle. They looked down through the brown trees into a blanket of marsh grass and two hundred yards further on, to the beach and the ocean.

  Susan was sitting on the wall, her legs dangling over the far side. She faced the beach, the rifle resting across her lap.

  “I guess I’m always a little amazed when law students have a hard time,” she said, twisting so she could see Hart in the deck chair behind her. “When you grow up with it, you get immune. It’s like I don’t see Dad anymore. I know he’s walking around. I know when I’m with him, but I don’t feel him.”

  “I don’t know,” Hart said. He closed his eyes. “I sit in that damn class. For days I sit there. Then I read his books in the library, and I abstract the cases he’s chosen. know everything about him. The stripe of his ties. How many suits he has. He’s like the air or the wind. He’s everywhere. You can say you don’t care, but he’s there anyway, pounding his mind into mine. He screws around with my life.”