The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  “Holy shit,” one of the football players breathed.

  “Jesus Christ,” the other one said.

  The athletic field was burning. The fire shot up as though from the snow itself, and flames licked the air. Smoke blew every which way. On the snow, maybe six feet in front of the flames, were three large words drawn in red paint: BROTHERHOOD. TRUTH. EQUALITY. Behind me, the teachers were attempting to round us up, but we weren’t moving. We were pressed to the windows, searching for the source of the flames.

  Then the wind must have shifted; the smoke blew away to reveal three wooden posts more than ten feet high, thrust into the ground. Hanging from each was a body strung up by its neck. The bodies were on fire. People were shouting. Someone was crying. Were those actual people? Who were they? Who had done this? Fire trucks and an ambulance sped through the school gates. Just then the fire burned through one of the ropes, and its body fell.

  “Get to your homerooms!” a frantic teacher yelled.

  The firemen and medics took off across the field, dashing through the red paint, turning TRUTH and half of EQUALITY into a pile of bloody-looking snow. One medic picked up the fallen body from the ground, raising it with ease. It was a dummy. They all were.

  At the end of the day, I hoisted my book bag and set out for the Historical Society. I didn’t tell my parents I was going; I just walked off school property.

  It was a cottony gray afternoon, and the air smelled like wood smoke. The plow had done a good job on the roads, but there are few sidewalks in Nye, so I had to walk a narrow line between the pavement and the thick banks of snow on the shoulder. It was slow going, but the crunching of my boots helped me relax. It felt good to be away from the school, out in the world where nobody was watching me or sending me cryptic, frightening messages. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw the incinerating bodies and their snapped necks.

  “Always confront your fears head-on,” Murrow advised me now. I imagined him walking beside me in a fedora and long wool overcoat. He had no cigarette; his hands were thrust into his pockets for warmth. “I aired London after Dark during the Blitz,” he continued, “because I wanted to show people’s fortitude along with their fear. I wanted to scatter the shadows.”

  “Tell that to Katie Milford,” I said. “I asked her about reporting the hangings, and she shooed me off like I was a squawking crow.”

  “Editors can be a real pain in the ass,” Murrow said, shaking his head. “But what can you do?”

  The trees stretched tall and straight on the roadside, like soldiers at attention. I thought about the difference between driving to a destination and walking there. Murrow grew up in a log cabin without electricity or running water, and if he needed to get somewhere, he walked. From now on, I decided I was going to be like Murrow—through sheer force of will, I would take myself wherever I needed to go.

  I did wonder, however, if Murrow had been this cold. My lungs hurt and my fingertips burned. To distract myself from the discomfort, I thought about the wizened old person who probably ran the Historical Society, someone who greeted visitors with cocoa and cookies and would love me automatically because I reminded them of their grandkid. I picked up the pace.

  Finally, after forty-five minutes, I saw a wooden post that read, Nye Historical Society. Founded 1982. The date was disappointing; I’d been hoping for a much earlier century. Still, I looked past the sign and saw a two-story white clapboard house sitting at the top of a steep hill. I puffed my way toward it and arrived with burning legs.

  The Historical Society windows were crusted with dirt. The slanted, splintered porch looked like something out of a horror movie, and I couldn’t help but think of myself as the lost little girl who stumbles upon the witch’s cabin in the wood. But I’d come all this way, so I rang the doorbell. Soon the door swung open, and there before me was not the elderly person I expected but a young woman with startling green eyes, cat’s-eye glasses, and so many freckles that I felt dizzy just looking at her. She had thick wavy auburn hair, and her fingers were covered with rings.

  “Well, hello!” The rings flashed as she gesticulated. “Come in or you’ll freeze.”

  I hesitated but stepped into the foyer. The woman closed and locked the door. She flipped on the lights, illuminating cabinets and display cases. “Welcome to the Nye Historical Society.” She sounded like an overjoyful telemarketer. “I’m Hazel.”

  I introduced myself and held out my hand. Hazel looked surprised and amused; she probably didn’t get many hand shakers. I told her I was researching a story for my school newspaper.

  “A reporter?” She raised an eyebrow. It arched to an astounding point.

  “I heard you had a series of letters written by Charles Prisom, the founder of Mariana Academy,” I said. Hazel frowned and the freckles around her mouth slid toward her lips, as though they might fall in and be swallowed. “I’m very careful with historical documents,” I added.

  “Oh, I’m not worried about you!” Her laugh was like ice tinkling in a glass. “It’s just that nobody has asked for those letters in years. I’m not even sure I know where they are.”

  She turned and walked back into the house. I followed her past a photo series labeled Decades of Nye and a glass-topped table bearing a velvet box, laid with six pewter spoons. Cutlery, 1765, the card read. Then I was following Hazel down a narrow hallway. She had some serious hips and her gray sweater and blue scarf bulked her up quite a bit, but she glided in front of me as though upon a litter. Then she opened a door, and I stopped short. An enormous room was spread out beneath exposed rafters, as colorful and cluttered as the backstage of a Victorian period play.

  “This is my studio,” Hazel said. “The Historical Society provides me with room and board. Feel free to nose around. I’ll make us some tea.”

  I stepped inside and was immediately enveloped by the scent of musty clothes and rose perfume. Threadbare Persian rugs lay upon the scuffed wooden floorboards, and scarf-shrouded lamps cast a golden, shadowy light on chipped gilded mirrors. The walls were cluttered with prints—peacocks, exotic flowers, and Renaissance-style paintings where men in tights wooed women in billowing dresses. A bowl of juicy-looking pomegranates sat on a cluttered side table. I touched one, but it was fake. Beside them was a bound folder with a cover page that said, The Interfering Goddess: Power, Manipulation, and Sexual Politics in Classical Literature. A Master’s Thesis by Hazel Greenburg. I read the first few lines, but it was thick on the theory, so I turned my attention to the phenomenal clutter of books. They were stacked on tables, inside the fireplace, and in tall piles by the bed.

  The bed itself was covered with a quilt that resembled a wall tapestry. It depicted a naked, muscular man standing beside a tree. Tied to the tree was a white cow with large sorrowful eyes. But the really strange thing (if a naked man hanging out with a cow wasn’t strange enough) was that the man’s body was covered in eyes. There were eyes on his forehead, his nipples, and his stomach. I bent over to see if he had eyes on his penis.

  “Iris.”

  Startled, I expected to see Hazel right behind me. In fact, she was across the room on a chintzy couch of faded blue silk. I lingered by the bed until Hazel smiled and held out my tea. “I don’t bite,” she said.

  I went to her and took the mug. I sat down, and the cushion sagged like I was trapped in quicksand.

  “So why are you interested in Charles Prisom?” Hazel asked, blowing on her tea.

  I told her about my Charles Prisom article, but I was feeling unusually shy, and my voice sounded small. “One of my sources suggested I come here,” I squeaked.

  “Your sources, eh?” For a moment I thought Hazel was patronizing me, but then she nodded. “You sound like a serious journalist.” Hazel looked deep into my eyes, her green irises glowing like light refracted through sea glass. It was preternatural, that color. “So tell me,” she said, curling and uncurling her fingers around her mug, “what would you like to know about Mr. Prisom?”

  “Well, my
source said Charles Prisom wrote a bunch of letters about his motivations for founding Mariana Academy. She—I mean, my source—said there might be information here about the origins of the Community Code.” I hoped Hazel hadn’t caught my slip-up. When a source is secret, you’re not even supposed to reveal the gender.

  Hazel placed her hand over her heart as though she were about to sing the national anthem. “I pledge to follow the wisdom and forbearance of my father, Charles Prisom, in building a community of Brotherhood, Truth, and Equality for All.”

  I blinked. “How do you know that?” Hazel had just spoken Mariana’s hallowed school pledge. Before every test, students sign their name to it as a promise not to cheat. Before every assembly, we stand and recite these words. I thought about the burning figures in the snow. The bodies of Brotherhood, Truth, and Equality disintegrating into ash.

  “I’m a Mariana lifer,” Hazel said. “K through twelve.”

  Thirteen years in Nye! I nearly groaned out loud. I did not envy Hazel at all. But then, she was still here, so she must have found something to like about the place.

  “Can I make a guess about your source?” she asked.

  “All right, but I’m really not at liberty to say if you guess right or wrong.”

  “I’d put my money on Mrs. Kringle.”

  I managed to keep my face blank for about two seconds before gasping with surprise. Immediately thereafter, I shielded my face, horrified. There was nothing particularly secret about Mrs. Kringle, but I was practicing for the day when I’d have to pull a Judith Miller. How could I have failed so miserably?

  Everybody makes a mistake sometime, Murrow whispered. Do I even have to remind you about the Person to Person fiasco when I stupidly let the sources preapprove the interview questions?

  Your sources were celebrities! I thought back. Nobody expects honest answers from famous people.

  “So you’re not from here, are you?” Hazel said, not realizing she’d interrupted a conversation with Murrow.

  “We just moved from Boston,” I said, and told her about my old school.

  “I tutored students at University School between 2002 and 2004, when I was getting my master’s!” She seemed genuinely thrilled to have this in common with me, and I felt a rush of warmth toward her.

  “So I would have been in kindergarten and first grade then. Do you think—I mean, maybe I even saw you there.”

  “It’s certainly possible. University School is pretty small, right? But you don’t sound thrilled about the move.”

  I shrugged.

  Hazel looked like she was going to ask me another question in that vein but then seemed to change her mind. I was very curious to know what she was thinking about me.

  “Tell me,” she said, “have you ever been to Greece?”

  I shook my head, wondering at the digression.

  “It’s an extraordinary country,” Hazel said. “I was there for a couple of years, working on archaeology digs, waitressing, traveling around the islands. And of course, I met plenty of Greek men . . .” She stopped, curling the corner of her lip.

  Non sequitur though it was, this was getting good.

  “Well, maybe that’s a story for another time.”

  I sat back, disappointed.

  “But how about you? Anyone at school strike your fancy?”

  “I’m focusing on my reporting right now,” I said.

  “Well, I guess it’s good to have priorities.”

  “So—the people you met in Greece?” I prompted, trying to lead her back to the Greek men.

  “The people were lovely, more or less . . .” Hazel bit her lip, looked past me into the room. Her eyes glazed over in the dim, wavering light. Half the lamps in Hazel’s studio flickered as though they were on the verge of burning out.

  “Your life is so interesting,” I said, still hoping for more on the men. “I mean to travel like that, meet so many people.”

  She shrugged. “When I was your age, I had everything planned out, but sometimes, you just have to let the Fates guide you.”

  “You mean things didn’t turn out the way you wanted?”

  The way Hazel looked at me, I worried that I’d offended her. But then she said, “I returned from Greece five years ago, and I tutored classics at Mariana and worked part-time as an assistant for Mr. Renquist, the previous curator here at the Historical Society. And then one morning about three years ago, I came in to work to find Mr. Renquist sitting at the kitchen table.” Hazel nodded at the table by the sink. “His face was lying in a bowl of scrambled eggs.”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “Heart attack,” she said, shrugging as if it was perfectly usual to find your employer dead in his breakfast. “Anyway, the town hired me as full-time curator.”

  “So you stopped tutoring?”

  “Eventually, but not because of my job here. At the time that I took this position, I was tutoring a girl named Mary—one of the brightest students I have ever taught. She was a loner and shy, but we’d been reading Cicero’s orations and I could see how much they excited her. She became interested in Roman politics and government, and soon enough she announced that she wanted to run for junior class representative. We spent months writing speeches, working on Mary’s oratorical skills, and designing a strategic campaign. She gained confidence. She blossomed. People at school started to take her seriously. Before she decided to run, most of her classmates barely knew she existed.”

  “Did she win?”

  “No.” A low growl vibrated in Hazel’s throat. “Mary was accused of rigging the election. It’s a long story, but essentially the Community Council brought evidence to Headmaster Pasternak proving that she’d tampered with the ballots.”

  “Wait—” I said, and sat up as straight as the sagging cushion would allow. “Mary? You’re not talking about Mary Breckinridge?”

  Hazel nodded, and my body swelled with adrenaline: the feeling of making an unexpected investigative link.

  “The Community Council Disciplinary Board recommended that Mary be thrown off the campaign and receive a two-week suspension,” Hazel continued. “I talked to Pasternak on her behalf, but he said the evidence proved her guilt. And it ruined her reputation. Afterwards, not a single teacher agreed to write her a college recommendation. She repeated her senior year at another school.”

  I was starting to understand why Prisom’s Party was so active at Mariana. I thought about the mob of students, chanting at Marvin, berating him. And if his sister was innocent, I couldn’t even imagine how indignant she must have felt, knowing she’d been wronged and having no recourse to prove her innocence.

  “How do you explain the evidence against Mary?” I asked.

  “Evidence is fabricated all the time. Think about governments that also control their country’s media. Think about Russia and China. They’re masters of manipulation. It’s not for nothing that the students who accused Mary of rigging the election also tried her.”

  I thought about Katie Milford shooting down all my stories and understood Hazel’s indignation.

  “When I came back here after all that time away,” Hazel said, “I’d hoped the system had changed. It hadn’t. In framing Mary Breckinridge, the students on the Community Council were sending a message: ‘Don’t mess with the system or you’ll get burned.’ But enough of this depressing talk!”

  Hazel rose from the couch and took our mugs to the kettle for more hot water. I tracked her graceful movements—how she poured the milk, the way her fingers untangled strands of her wavy hair. She was womanly but also girlish. The woman part made me feel young and nervous, while the girl part made me feel as if she and I could be close friends.

  She returned with the tea, and my eyes fell on her fingers, curved around the mug. “That’s an interesting ring,” I said, pointing to the thick silver band she wore on the middle finger of her right hand. Perched atop the band was a silver fly with globular eyes and sharp, flexed wings.

  “It’s a hor
sefly,” she said. “The Greeks called it the gadfly. A good friend gave it to me.” She leaned toward me. “In ancient Greece, Socrates was called the Gadfly of Athens. No matter how hard his opponents tried to swat him away, he kept biting them with difficult questions.”

  “He sounds like a journalist.”

  Hazel nodded, a sly smile creeping across her lips. “So he was. Not unlike yourself, I’d think.”

  I glowed with the compliment. But then Hazel grew serious. “Do you know what it took for Socrates’ enemies to make him stop pursuing the truth?”

  “Hemlock,” I said, eager to show off my knowledge of the classics. But Hazel regarded me with concern, like I was about to drink a cup of the poison myself.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “That’s right.”

  For a moment neither of us spoke. Then I blurted, “I think certain students at the school are trying to intimidate me. They think I’m a gadfly.” I told Hazel about the note in the Trench and the computer virus. “Not that I think I’m as smart as Socrates, of course. And truthfully, he was pretty annoying the way he kept pestering everyone and—”

  “Fear allows a ruling regime to thrive.” Hazel’s stare made me snap my mouth shut. “But you don’t strike me as easily intimidated.”

  She was right. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t back down in the face of Nixon. And Murrow certainly didn’t cower before McCarthy.

  “And there’s another thing,” I said. “I’ve got this teacher, Mr. Kaplan, and—”

  “A teacher? Mr. Kaplan?” she repeated, surprised. I nodded. She raised another arched eyebrow. “So what of him?”

  Hazel leaned forward, expectant, her expression strangely voracious. I started to answer, but I couldn’t do it. If I shared my suspicion that Mr. Kaplan was involved with Prisom’s Party, I’d end up trying to explain the cryptic staring contest he and I had been having since the ice cream social. And then Hazel would think I was crazy. She’d tell me I was hallucinating or paranoid. She’d probably confirm everything Dr. Patrick thought about my unsound mental state. And I didn’t want that to happen; I didn’t want Hazel to send me away.