Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT (A Harvest Test Preparation Book)

by Charles Harrington Elster

  Caitlin did some quick mental calculations. The clock on the newsroom wall said 7:55. If she hustled she’d have forty-five minutes to interview Hargrave and ten to make it back for her nine o’clock class. She had another morning class and afternoon classes from one to three, but she was free after that. Two hours should be enough time to get a draft together and meet the deadline, she thought.

  “Well?” Bill said.

  “Forget about Steve Rosenblum. I’m on my way.”

  Caitlin hurried up Holyfield Street to Madison, crossed and headed up a long, tree-lined block of grandiose Victorian houses set back from the street.

  Walking past the lush lawns and meticulously kept gardens filled with luxuriant shrubs and plots of vivid flowers, she thought of all the questions she could ask Hargrave. Did he usually work late in his office on Sunday nights? How might the assailant have entered? Had he heard the person approach?

  As her lines of inquiry multiplied, Caitlin began to feel as if she were a character in a story she had rehearsed in her mind a thousand times before. She had always wanted to be the vigilant, tenacious reporter hot on the investigative trail, and often she had imagined herself asking the crucial question that would elicit the telltale fact and make the perpetrator crack and confess. Now, here she was, a real reporter investigating a real crime. It was almost too real to be true.

  At the end of the next block Caitlin reached her destination. She paused at the entrance and looked up at the four stories of the College Health Services building. The exterior was austere and functional. The windows were simply windows, without any architectural embellishment, and the dreary walls showed the wavy marks of the plywood forms into which the gray concrete had been poured. The edifice seemed somber and out of place on this boulevard of green lawns and winsome old houses.

  When Caitlin reached out to open the glass doors, they parted with an effortless whoosh. Inside the reception area a few people sat in molded plastic chairs reading copies of Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, and Sports Illustrated. To the left was a long white counter. Behind it a young man sat at a desk, working at a computer terminal.

  Caitlin walked to the counter and set down her tote bag. “Good morning,” she said amiably.

  The young man glanced up from the screen. “I’ll be right with you, okay?” He rattled off something on the keyboard, then stood up and came to the counter. He was a good foot taller than Caitlin, and his ponderous frame was imposing. He leaned forward on his hands and studied her from behind wire-rimmed glasses. “May I help you?” he asked in a deep voice.

  “Yes, please. I’m Caitlin Ciccone from the Holyfield Herald.” She extended her hand.

  “Hello, Caitlin Ciccone from the Holyfield Herald,” the young man said, smiling as he shook her hand. “I’m Ben Schofield from College Health Services.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Ben Schofield from College Health Services,” Caitlin said, acknowledging the joke.

  “Well,” Ben said, “what’s an enterprising young reporter like you doing at CHS so early in the morning on the first day of classes? Got a bad case of writer’s cramp already?”

  Caitlin laughed. “No, I’m here on an assignment. Can you tell me where I can find Professor Harold Hargrave? He’s a patient here. He was brought in last night.”

  “I see. Let me check the computer.” Ben sat down at his desk and typed in a command. “Let’s see. Hargrave . . . Hargrave,” he muttered, scrolling his monitor. “I’m sorry,” he said after a minute, “but there’s no Hargrave here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But that’s impossible.” Caitlin took out the copy of The Plains from her bag and pointed to the front page. “It says right here that Harold Hargrave was admitted to CHS last night.”

  Ben returned to the counter and examined the article. “Yes, it sure does. I guess you can’t believe everything you read nowadays.”

  Caitlin felt deflated by Ben’s terse dismissal of the report. The insinuation that what was printed in the newspaper might not be entirely trustworthy was disconcerting to her. “Are you sure he’s not here?” she pressed.

  Ben nodded. “Positive. Maybe he checked out earlier this morning.” He walked back to the computer. “Let’s take a look. What was the name again?”

  “Hargrave. Harold Hargrave.”

  Caitlin leaned over the counter and tried to decipher the data on the screen.

  “Here we go,” Ben said. “You just missed him. He left at seven-thirty, right after first rounds. I guess he couldn’t wait.”

  “You mean he’s okay?”

  “I suppose so. But you’ll have to ask him for the details.” Ben smiled. “Sorry. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Caitlin thought for moment. She didn’t want to waste the trip up here if she could help it. “Well, maybe. Perhaps I could speak with his doctor?”

  Ben checked the computer again. “That would be Dr. Abigail Benson. She was on the night shift in emergency. She went off duty a few minutes ago, at eight o’clock. Sorry.”

  “Is there anyone else here now who might know something about his case?”

  Ben leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “Well, I don’t think so. But there’s something else that might help you.”

  “Anything would be great, Ben.”

  “Okay, wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  Ben disappeared through a pair of swinging doors, then emerged a moment later with a manila folder. “Here’s his file,” he said, placing it on the counter.

  “Are you allowed to show me this?” Caitlin asked.

  Ben shrugged. “Not really.”

  Caitlin gave him a skeptical look. “‘Not really’ means ‘no,’ right?”

  Ben leaned over the counter. “Actually, they could probably fire me for showing you this,” he whispered, “but I must confess, I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for reporters. My mom writes for the Washington Post, so I’ve heard all her war stories about how hard it is to get people to cooperate and release important information for a breaking story.”

  Caitlin frowned. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Don’t worry. They need me too much around here, anyway. I’m the only one who knows the intricacies of their computer system. If anybody finds out, I’ll probably just get one of those official reprimands, in triplicate like everything else around this place. Besides, it’s not as though I’m divulging government secrets or disclosing the Pentagon Papers or something. There’s nothing in that file that Dr. Benson wouldn’t tell you if she were here.”

  Caitlin felt caught in an ethical dilemma. She didn’t want to coerce Ben into doing something wrong, but at the same time she didn’t want to dissuade him from showing her something that probably would help her investigation.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “If anything happens, I can say it was my fault.”

  Ben smiled. “That’s sweet but unnecessary. Just consider this a leak from a sympathetic anonymous source, all right?”

  “Well, all right.”

  Tentatively, Caitlin opened the file. Inside were several forms, each in triplicate. They seemed to have been scrawled on by a child whose language was not English and whose penmanship was particularly inscrutable. Caitlin couldn’t make head or tail of it. She looked up at Ben. “Do you understand any of this medical jargon?”

  Ben leaned over and studied the forms for a minute, then squinted at Caitlin through his glasses. “Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme.”

  “What?”

  “That’s from ‘La Jolie Russe’ by Apollinaire.”

  “The French poet?”

  “Yes. It’s from a poem in which he takes a sort of survey of the ordeals he’s gone through and then measures the sum of those experiences against love.”

  “I don’t get it,” Caitlin said. “How is the poem pertinent to Hargrave’s medical report?”

  “The line refers to Apollinaire’s head injury in W
orld War I and his operation. They put him under with chloroform. You see this?” Ben pointed to a notation on one of the forms. “CHCI3. That’s the chemical formula for chloroform,” he explained. “In the old days it was used as an anesthetic. Apparently, someone knocked the poor guy out with it. The stuff is pretty toxic. It can be lethal if the person administering it doesn’t know what he’s doing. Your man’s lucky to be alive.”

  “Wow, that’s really interesting,” Caitlin said, closing the folder. “Thanks for all your help, Ben. I’d better get going or I’ll miss my first class of the semester.”

  “Hey, Caitlin,” Ben said, flashing her a smile. “You won’t forget me when you win the Pulitzer Prize, will you?”

  Caitlin laughed. “No way. You’ll be the first person I thank in my acceptance speech.”

  The heavy glass doors quietly slid open and Caitlin took a deep, rejuvenating breath of the wholesome morning air. She had done it. She had hung in there and uncovered an important fact: chloroform. On the other hand, she had failed to find Hargrave, and Bill had said it was imperative that she interview him.

  As she strode back along the tree-lined sidewalk toward Madison Street, Caitlin realized that if she were going to make it to all her classes and meet the deadline, she would have to track down Hargrave between noon and one—her lunch hour.

  She frowned and kicked a pile of dead leaves. When you’re an investigative reporter, I guess you don’t eat, she thought.

  Chapter 15

  Something Ventured, Something Gained

  The Indian summer air was clear and the sun already warm when Phil strolled out onto the broad steps of Steinbach Commons. After a fitful night’s sleep he had awakened early, well before his roommates, and headed off alone to satisfy his voracious appetite with a huge breakfast—two fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, an English muffin, a cheese blintz, half a grapefruit, orange juice, and two cups of coffee. This was hardly a low-fat, low-cholesterol menu, but at five feet, eleven inches and a trim, muscular 175 pounds, Phil figured he could handle it. Not a bad way to begin the first day of classes, he mused, patting his surfeited belly.

  Phil gazed across East Quad, which was alive with spontaneous activity on this first morning of school. Scores of students were hurrying off to class or breakfast or sitting on the stone benches in the courtyard, chatting or reading. Someone had put stereo speakers in an open window, and music floated over the entire scene.

  Phil took a deep breath of the salubrious air, then pulled off his varsity jacket and tied the sleeves around his waist. He looked at his watch: 8:52 A.M. Plenty of time before his first class at ten o’clock. No sense procrastinating, he thought, remembering the resolution he had made yesterday. Might as well get a head start on the semester.

  He trotted down the steps and rounded the corner of the dining hall. Then he jogged across College Street and took the steps up to Tillinghast Library two at a time.

  The arched entryway was empty except for a beefy security guard sitting behind a desk to one side of the entrance. Phil approached.

  “Excuse me, sir. Where can I find the information desk?”

  “You want a map?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  The guard handed him a brochure from a pile on his desk.

  Phil wandered into the lobby, studying the map. Main reading room and periodicals to the right; computers, reference room, and information to the left. He headed left.

  Five huge stained-glass windows lined one side of the hallway, each depicting a scene from American history. Phil walked by them slowly, admiring the way they diffused the morning light into bands of color that projected the scenes partly on the far wall and partly on the stone floor.

  The first window showed Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and several other Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence. In the next, George Washington stood in a boat full of soldiers crossing the Delaware River. The third pictured Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and manumitting a group of slaves. The fourth portrayed Robert E. Lee surrendering his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

  Phil paused by the last stained-glass window, not recognizing the grave face of the man it depicted. He wore an academic gown and a mortarboard on his head. One hand held a feather pen, raised as though to write in the air; the other hand held a large book with the words Holy Bible on the spine. On a rolling banner above the man’s head was the Latin Homo doctus in se semper divitias habet. Below the man’s feet another banner read, “Nil desperandum, 1878.”

  In the first phrase, Phil knew that homo meant “man” and semper meant “always,” as in semper fidelis, “always faithful,” the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. The meaning of the whole, however, was obscure. From reading the college catalogues, Phil recognized the second phrase as the Holyfield motto, “Never say die.”

  Beneath the window was a small plaque, which Phil examined. “The Rev. Ephraim Elijah Harper (1828–1900),” it read, “founder and first president of Holyfield College.” Phil surmised 1878 must have been the year the man had established the college.

  Taking several steps back, he looked at all five stained-glass windows again. That’s interesting, he thought. All the people in the scenes are men. Even the slaves surrounding Lincoln are all men. Where are the women? he wondered.

  As he pensively rubbed his jaw, it occurred to him that when Tillinghast Library was built, back in the 1920s, it was common for the endeavors of men to eclipse the contributions of women. That was the social norm, the prevailing bias of the time.

  Phil remembered the honors seminar in American history he had taken last year in which several of the assignments had focused on important women. His teacher, Mrs. Fernandez, had impressed on them that although conventional American history books might make it seem that all women had led servile, commonplace lives, one only had to look a bit more diligently to see that men weren’t the only ones who had had a profound and lasting influence on the nation’s course.

  Much had changed for the better in the relationship between the sexes since these windows were designed, Phil reflected. Yet the ultimate democratic goal—equality not only between men and women but among all people—still seemed remote. How do you go about solving a problem when its nature is so elusive and its causes so difficult to ascertain?

  Phil turned, continued down the long hall, and entered a vast room lined with reference books, computer stalls, and antiquated wooden card catalogues. The center of the room was filled with rows of long desks at which a handful of people sat reading or writing.

  Phil looked up. On an elaborate frieze that ran around the room at the edge of the ceiling, the names of dozens of renowned writers and thinkers were painted in ornate Gothic lettering. They were in alphabetical order: Aeschylus, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Balzac, Bentham, Blake, Cervantes, Chaucer, Cicero, Copernicus, Dante, Descartes, Donne, Emerson, Euripides—the list of intellectual heavyweights went on and on. Phil read every name; then, astounded, he scrutinized them again, counting carefully this time. Out of seventy-seven names, he recognized only two that belonged to women. The history of man was everywhere, he thought, but where was the history of woman?

  On the right side of the room stood the information desk, behind which sat a librarian of indeterminate age.

  “May I help you, young man?”

  “Yes. I’d like to take out a book.”

  “Well, you’re in the right place. Do you have an ID?”

  Phil reached into his wallet and pulled out the card that had been sent in the mail a month before. It was the same photograph he had used for his yearbook.

  The librarian examined his card. “Where’s your validation sticker?”

  “Validation sticker?”

  “You should have been sent a blue validation sticker when you paid your fees. The sticker goes here, on the bottom of your card,” she explained. “Are you a freshman?”

  “Yes.”

 
; “What’s your Social Security number?”

  Phil recited his number. The librarian entered it into a computer, then spent a few moments studying the information on the screen.

  “Okay, Mr. McKnight, it looks as if your fees have been paid. Go down to the bursar’s office tomorrow and get a sticker. In the meantime, fill out this form. It gives you temporary borrowing privileges. You can take out up to six books for a maximum of twenty-one days. That doesn’t include books on overnight reserve. To check those out, you need your sticker.”

  Phil completed the form and gave it to the librarian. A minute later she handed him his temporary card and a brochure explaining how to use the computerized catalogue. “Good luck,” she said with a smile.

  Phil walked to one of the computer stalls and settled in, map and brochure in hand.

  “Title, subject, or author?” the prompt on the screen asked. Phil moved the highlight bar to “author,” pressed the “enter” key, then typed in “Shakespeare” at the prompt for “name.” The computer searched, then displayed the message “41 items found. Press ‘FI’ to search a title. Press ‘enter’ to view list.”

  Only forty-one items? This should be fairly easy, Phil thought. He pressed “enter” to view the list.

  “Whoops,” he muttered. On the screen was a list of Shakespeare’s works. Phil realized he should have selected “subject” instead of “author.” He wanted a book about Shakespeare, not one by him.

  He returned to the main menu and instructed the computer to search again. In a moment the machine informed him that it had found 842 relevant items.

  Undaunted, Phil pressed “enter” and began scrolling industriously through the list. Emblems of Uncertainty in the Late Tragedies, The Hawk and the Handsaw: A Study in Rhetorical Strategies, and Much Ado about Nothing: Desultory Delights and Other Aesthetic Digressions were just three of the long inventory of esoteric titles enumerated on the screen.