Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

  “He wouldn’t tell me the other person involved, though.”

  Shoddy came rumbling in a few minutes later, a huge smile on his face. He chucked his duffle bag up onto his bed and flopped onto the couch, ignoring the obviously intense conversation Ben and I were having.

  “Dude,” he said to us both, “I was just talking to that kid Terry down the hall and he said Duncan is on academic probation for copying someone’s work. Isn’t that hilarious!”

  Ben’s eyes shot at Shoddy. If I could’ve read his mind, I’m sure the mental image would have resembled a death scene from a Tarrantino movie.

  “Well,” I said, “at least that answers your question.”

  “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” Ben growled and made for the door.

  “Whoa big boy,” Shoddy said. “He’s not there. I already checked. Hasn’t come back yet.”

  Since we had a couple days before classes started up again, I grabbed some beers from the mini-fridge that I re-stocked and turned on the X-Box. We spent a few hours virtually killing Nazis, which helped calm Ben.

  By noon I had received a phone call from Dean Midland’s receptionist, Mary, telling me to be to his office in an hour.

  “What the hell does he want to see me for?”

  “Did you steal my shit, too?” Ben said, only half joking.

  “How do you think I passed Brit Lit?” I laughed as I grabbed my shampoo and headed out for the bathroom.

  Ben and Shoddy weren’t in the room when I returned. I had some time to collect my thoughts before trekking across campus to the administration building.

  Campus was quiet and gray. Even the golden cross atop the chapel was tarnished by the bleak winter day. I took the main concrete pathway across the Quad—the only pathway they shoveled and salted. The grass and radiating walkways remained covered in frozen gray slush, the aborted remnants of a holiday blizzard. By the end of the walkway, water had seeped into my shoes. I sloshed to the left towards the administration building, the oldest building on campus and frequently the front cover photo of its promotional materials.

  The main gates of the college, sleek iron-wrought and spiked, admitted visitors to a long driveway that curled past the science laboratories and the friary, ending at a dead end circle in front of the administration building’s beautiful, gothic archway. In the summer, spring and fall the grass in the circle was clipped to a perfect crew cut and the flag pole shined; flowers bountiful unlike anywhere else on campus garnished the landscape and the jagged spires and ambiguous cement façade were spray washed to reveal an unnatural cement color. In the winter the plows focused on the driveway and the circle. Maintenance workers were seen hanging from the stained-glass windows, using brooms to brush away snow from the façade’s statues and more unique structural quirks. To the outside world, this was the college’s front door. To everyone behind the walls, it was rarely seen. Nobody ever really came that way.

  I didn’t. I snuck in a side door and stomped the slush from my shoes as I walked down the hallway towards the rotunda. Before checking the brass faculty directory, I looked up and examined the high colored and castle-like windows. On brighter days the sun splashed through them and glistened the spectrum around the stone circle immediately inside the building’s front door. To prospective students it was like walking into a carnival, vibrant fun splayed out in front of them. All they had to do was sign on the dotted line. To their parents it looked like a medieval church foyer, the light of God shining down on their son or daughter.

  I chuckled because that day the dreary winter sun wasn’t having the same effect. I saw no sign of clowns or the Lord. I checked the directory and headed for Dean Midland’s office on the third floor.

  I had never seen Dean Lucius Midland before. He was one of those administration people who you always hear about but who never makes an appearance outside his office. He dealt in discipline. And by all accounts, he was good at it.

  His reputation preceded him; he was conservative in his politics but liberally dealt out punishment. A few students talked of him as they would the grim reaper; a curious inevitability for any student caught breaking the rules. Most said the scariest moment was when he let his thick Louisiana accent wrap around your name for the first time, like a swamp snake slowly coiling around its prey.

  I wasn’t afraid, though. I had done nothing wrong.

  When I reached his office and entered the waiting area, the cute girl behind the desk quieted the horror stories.

  Mary the receptionist was a brunette graduate student, thin and buxom with a slightly oversized nose. It actually added to her attractiveness, balancing out her other oversized body parts. She wore black-rimmed glasses and her hair in a ponytail and didn’t say a word when I walked into the foyer outside the Dean’s office. She simply pointed a well-manicured finger at a long wooden bench against the wall and went back to whatever studying she was doing before I came in.

  The massive oak double doors to Dean Midland’s office were closed. They looked ancient and heavy, resembling the rest of the architecture in the old castle-like administration building. This outer room’s décor matched the school’s outdated perspective that handcuffed it to religious philosophies. If the administration building was the campus citadel, Dean Midland’s office was where the inquisition took place. If the Dean was dressed in full knight regalia, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The entire place gave off an air of sophisticated incredulity and intellectual castigation. Mary didn’t even have a computer on her desk. The only modern touch besides the industrial plastic no smoking sign hung above her head, was Mary. Even her beauty couldn’t bring the place out of the Dark Ages.

  “Dean Midland will see you now, Mr. Shaw,” Mary said sweetly. I must have been the only appointment that afternoon because I never told her my name. She glided over to the double doors, swung them open with ease and shut them behind me with the same grace and poise, like Audrey Hepburn studying for her MBA.

  At once a rush of musk and tobacco filled my nostrils. The Dean obviously broke at least one rule himself.

  The room matched the doors and if I hadn’t been lucid, I’d have thought I traveled back to a medieval scholar’s library. Dusty bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling and were filled with equally dusty books. Dark oak furniture filled the room, centered on an oversized desk behind which sat a vulture of a man.

  He wasn’t wearing full knight regalia. Rather, he wore a dark green sweater vest over a pinstripe shirt and dark necktie pulled painfully tight at the collar. A gray tweed jacket was thrown loosely on a sitting chair in the corner. His bald head sloped down into a hooked nose similar to Mary’s, although definitely without the same effect.

  He did not peer up from the manila file he was paging through on his desk but simply adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, pointed to a chair and said, “Please sit down, Mr. Shaw.”

  His Southern accent looped around my name, elongating the pronunciation and suffocating it, as if he were trying to snuff out my very identity.

  I sat for a few minutes before he acknowledged I obeyed his order. He was engrossed with reading my file, doing his background research. It was a tactic to scare me into talking. At first, I fell into the trap and my leg started twitching nervously. But once I understood his game, the drama and romance of the building, the room’s ancient preamble, the man and his mythological reputation, all vanished.

  I walked in ready for a normal conversation. But this was actually an interrogation. The Dean should have thought of a better approach, one where I wasn’t treated like a truant. The assumed antagonism was common between students and administration. Nevertheless, it still annoyed me. His stalling made me less apt to cooperate.

  “Mr. Shaw, thank you for coming in,” he said finally. His small black eyes behind the glasses inspected me intently. “I would like to talk to you about your roommates, Benjamin and Duncan.”

  The news of Duncan and Shoddy switching rooms clearly hadn’t made it to the administr
ation. We wanted it that way.

  “You know them, I presume?” he continued. It was an absurd question but he said it with purpose, slow and methodical.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, not masking my annoyance.

  “Good. Now please tell me if you ever saw them studying together?”

  “Actually I never saw either of them study. Ben always went to the library to study and I have no idea if or where Duncan read his books.”

  The Dean wasn’t pleased with my sarcasm.

  “Do your roommates ever use each others’ computers? For games or internet chat or anything?”

  He was being very direct. He wanted answers. He wanted a rat. I was no rat.

  “They both have their own computers. I don’t think they need to share,” I said. Then I got bold. “Sharing went out with Kindergarten, sir.”

  “Mr. Shaw, I assume your behavior means you know why you are here and have spoken to at least one of your roommates. I would also like to assure you that if you are trying to protect someone from punishment, you are going about it the wrong way. And should you be found guilty of obstruction, punishment will not avoid you.”

  He was strong-arming me. In reality, I had no evidence besides what I saw the night Duncan was on Ben’s computer. And although it was more probable than not, what I had was far from conclusive evidence. Also, I had no reason to be difficult. But the Dean was pompous and as I kept repeating in my head, no matter how much I disliked Duncan, I was no rat. I didn’t want that on my conscience. The Dean could squeeze me all he wanted.

  “I’m sorry sir, but I really don’t have any evidence or anything for you,” I said calmly. “I do know that Ben and Duncan are involved in some academic incident. I have spoken to one of them. There was nothing of benefit to your investigation said to me.”

  “I see,” he said. He stared at me for a few seconds, calculating the impact of his initial tactic. He knew his mistake.

  The Dean leaned back and picked off his glasses. He pulled an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket and proceeded to clean them. His fingers had the identifying stains of a chain smoker. He let the silence linger and right at the cusp of awkwardness, he spoke—his accent warmer and slightly less intrusive.

  “Augustine, I think we got off on the wrong foot, as they say. Let me tell you a little bit about myself.”

  He finished cleaning his glasses and returned them to perch on his nose. He continued.

  “I serve a purpose here on campus. Most students don’t know what that purpose is save the rumors and stories pervading every dorm room and drinking establishment. That is by design. Because of my business I need to seek an advantage. The Midland myths only enhance my ability to accomplish my mission.”

  “What exactly is your mission, sir?” I said.

  “To find the truth, Mr. Shaw,” he slowed his speech even more. The accent was becoming hypnotic. “Everyday I sit in this chair and listen to people spin stories and lies out of malice or desperation. All of them do it, even the innocent ones. But I know hidden somewhere behind the words is what actually happened the night they got caught with a fake ID or broke a window in the dining hall. That’s why I’m successful at my job. I can see the lies fueling the fire. And I know only the truth can extinguish it. What emerges from the resulting ashes, well, that depends on the arson. It really is a dreadfully tedious occupation.”

  He was bringing our encounter back to my original expectation. He threw out a conversation topic. I bit.

  “Then why do you do it?” I asked. I caught him off guard. He had not expected me to approach him so directly.

  “You aren’t scared or nervous right now, are you Augustine?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t light any fires.”

  A smile cracked slightly under his bird nose. He adjusted his glasses and it was gone.

  “I understand that, Augustine. I’m just looking for some guidance. As I said, I’m looking for the truth. I learned at a very young age the importance of telling the truth and ever since then, I’ve hunted it without mercy. Honesty at all costs. The only home for liars, Mr. Shaw, is a fiery circle far beneath the ground. What do you think of that?”

  “Well, sir, I must admit I’ve lied in the past. I’m not sure any human can go through life without spinning a few yarns, dropping a white lie here and there.”

  “Agreed. I myself have fallen off the wagon once or twice. But I came clean under my accord. You’re an observant boy. You must’ve noticed I have a slight nicotine addiction.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “You also know smoking isn’t allowed indoors anywhere on campus. However, by expressing my habit years ago, the school has decided to grant me certain liberties. I enjoy a stigma of concealment and should I be seen running outside every hour to puff greedily like some starved animal, my effectiveness could be rendered moot.”

  “Sounds like a fancy way of saying you got around the system.”

  “By telling the truth, Mr. Shaw. Like I said, I learned at an early age that keeping the truth from anyone can be just as detrimental as outright lying.”

  “Uh huh,” I said skeptically. The Dean could tell I was beginning to think him hypocritical. He closed my file and flopped it onto a pile of folders sitting at the corner of his desk.

  “I’ve been around on this earth a lot longer than you have, son. I’ve traveled many different roads. The one that I started out on, the one that prepared me to do what I do here, started way back in Louisiana,” his heavy Southern drawl lingering just a bit too long on the last word’s second syllable.

  He continued. “In Baton Rouge, I grew up the youngest of three boys. My daddy was a strict disciplinarian. He resembled very much the man you hear about in the Midland myths, the legend of the man you now sit in front of. Only difference, my daddy found his vice at the bottom of a bottle whereas mine is at the end of a cigarette. My family was poor. Our clothes were tattered. Our home was dilapidated. Even with the peach trees my father grew, food was a luxury. My brothers and I never wanted more. We never knew what else existed in America. All we knew was a family stuck together. It was us against them, whoever ‘them’ was. At least until I became one of ‘them.’”

  As his memories came to light, so did the thickness of his accent. Each word was emphasized, heavy and curled. The Dean leaned further back in his chair and the black pebbles behind the glasses shifted to the ceiling and away from me.

  “I was young when we used to play around the peach trees,” Midland said. “My older brothers would hide up on the branches out of my reach and I’d scramble around looking for ways to catch them. We weren’t allowed to eat any fruit. That was for sellin’ only. Our daddy was strict with that rule.

  “One afternoon my brothers ran into the orchard to take their usual peach tree perches. I remember being frustrated more than usual but because the harvest was so poor that year, I could easily see my brothers’ hiding spots. There was one bushel of peaches on the front porch, ready for my daddy to take to the farmers market. Instead, I stole it and ran into the orchard. When I reached my brothers, I began hurling the peaches in their direction. I hit my oldest brother square on the face three times. They laughed and applauded my creativity but vowed revenge. When I ran out they jumped down, peach mush smeared their faces and juice soaked their shirts. I took off, retreated, having been the victim of their tomfoolery multiple times before.

  “I hid from them far in the woods behind our house for about an hour. When I thought it was safe to emerge, I made my way home. About a hundred feet from the back door I ran into my daddy dragging my oldest brother across the yard by the ear. My brother was still covered in peach remnants.

  “‘Did you steal the peaches, Lucius?’ my father heaved at me. He reeked of whiskey.

  “‘I know your brothers stole them peaches. You need a beatin’ too?’ he said. My young brain registered only self-preservation. I watched my brother’s heart break when I said, ‘no daddy. I was out in the woods all day.’
>
  “My daddy beat my brother worse than ever that evening. My brother screamed with each belt lash but it was my daddy that yelled loudest, mostly about telling the truth and how those peaches were going to bring in enough money to feed the whole family. Ever since then I’ve hated peaches.

  “But as I’m sure you can infer, I’ve always told the truth, Augustine. Basically, my brother was whooped by my own hand. If that’s the price of withholding the truth, I’m not willing to pay it. I have a bit of an obsession. I’m persistent. Most people don’t leave here without revealing something. It’s why I get paid for what I do. There is never a reason to hide the truth.”

  I didn’t move. The Dean certainly changed his tactic. A tinge of sympathy crept up my gut. Before I could fully digest his story, Dean Midland leaned forward in his chair. He reassumed the hunched posture he had when I first entered his office. His black pebble eyes gazed directly into my own. Even his Southern drawl lost the tobacco-sweet, nostalgic edge. It was still genuinely Southern, but was once again serpentine, coiling with purpose at the limit of each phrase.

  “Please, Mr. Shaw,” he said, “Now that I told you a story, would you please indulge me with one of your own?”

  I was still perplexed, like being caught up in a web of words. Midland continued.

  “We are merely trying to sort out a situation that has caused significant confusion among some faculty members. Your friends Benjamin and Duncan are accused of committing a very serious crime. I would appreciate any assistance. You said before that you heard nothing of benefit to us. But I will ask you directly: did you ever see anything suspicious? Did you ever see a roommate copy the work of another?”

  I came back to the reality of the moment. I stayed silent, watched the second hand on the grandfather clock tick around the face once and tried to gather my thoughts.

  “Mr. Shaw, please answer the question,” Dean Midland said. Was the annoyance shifting to his side of the desk? “Did you ever see one of your roommates copy the work of the other?”