Flynn's World

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Flynn wasn’t sure. “Yes.”

  Loveson poured milk into the second cereal bowl. “I must now feed the old dear, Mr. Flynn. Proceed to wrestle her to bed. It isn’t a pretty sight. If you’ll forgive me? We’ll talk again, I’m sure.”

  SEVEN

  Flynn carried his dinner plate into the dining room. “Where’s Todd?”

  His family were almost finished with their dinners.

  “You know where,” Randy said.

  “Do I?”

  “I’ll be doing the same tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Winny asked, “Did you get fired today, Da?”

  “Not even fired up.” Flynn poured white vinegar on his boiled cabbage. “Had rather an easy day of it, in fact. I discovered that office politics is a great deal easier than real work. No wonder so many people take to it.”

  “Tell us about Professor Loveson,” Elsbeth said. “Such a brilliant man. I thought he was dead.”

  “All the brilliant people are dead.” Jenny was making a stick figure from four remaining strands of corned beef on her plate. “Is what Ms. Smithson-Rourke says.”

  “Who is Ms. Smithson-Rourke?”

  “Oh, Da. You know. Our Soc. teacher.”

  “We now have someone teaching your socks?”

  Winny said, “How pedestrian.”

  Jenny glared at her little brother. “Social Sciences.”

  “I think teachers frequently have the impression intellectual history ceases when they are granted their final degree.” Flynn put a small dab of Colman’s Hot Mustard on his bite of corned beef. “Remind me to send her some books.”

  “We have Professor Loveson’s books here somewhere,” Elsbeth said.

  “Louis Loveson is alive, and fighting,” Flynn answered his wife. “At least he is standing his ground. If I infer correctly, he is fighting for his work. His ideas. Why his ideas are being attacked, and by whom, is the mystery. His ideas always struck me as rather basic, if not downright obvious.”

  “Is he being physically attacked?” The possibility was not beyond Elsbeth’s ken.

  “So far, assaulted verbally. Threatened. We think. He’s not cooperating a bit. He seems ashamed to admit he receives threatening phone calls, notes.”

  “Hindi,” Elsbeth said.

  “Yes.”

  “Also a touch of Hebrew. ‘It must be my fault people are throwing stones at me.’ When will we learn?”

  “Human,” Flynn said.

  Randy asked, “People are throwing stones at an old man because of his ideas?”

  “People who don’t have ideas always throw stones at people who do. It makes them feel better. More equal. Eat your cabbage,” Elsbeth said.

  Winny intoned, “‘Everybody must get stoned.’”

  “Why must I eat my cabbage?” Randy asked dramatically. “I don’t like cabbage!”

  “So you will grow up big and strong and have ideas that make people throw stones at you,” his mother answered with equal drama.

  “That’s an ambition?” Randy asked.

  “Yes,” Flynn said. “That’s the ambition.”

  “You don’t know you’ve lived until you’ve been stoned,” Winny said.

  “Winny!” Jenny’s blue orbs blazed at her brother. “Will you shut up!”

  “You shut up, you blue-eyed blond girl!”

  “Now, Winny,” Flynn heard himself saying. “You must be respectful toward your elders.”

  “You know what Jenny said when Billy Capriano blew in her ear?”

  “Winny . . .” Jenny growled.

  “What did Jenny say when Billy Capriano blew in her ear?” Flynn asked.

  “She said, ‘Thanks for the refill!’”

  Flynn laughed.

  “Da!” Jenny exclaimed. “That’s not funny! Don’t you laugh at me!”

  “I’m laughing at Winny.”

  Winny snarled at his sister. “You’ve been picking on me all day. I did not hide your damned hair drier in the damned laundry hamper! I left your damned hair drier in the damned sink!”

  Silence around the dinner table.

  Finally, Jenny, with suspicion, accusation, disappointment, said: “Da . . . ?”

  Flynn cleared his throat. “I did not hide your hair drier in the laundry hamper, either. I found it in the sink. I did put it on the edge of the laundry hamper. It must have fallen in. By itself.”

  Through Jenny’s big blue eyes Flynn could watch her brain doing a swimmer’s racing turn.

  Shrewdly, she said, “When Winny slammed the door.”

  “So?” At ten-twenty that night Flynn made the day’s last trip to the necessarium, as he thought of it.

  Todd, having just come home, was in the upper corridor.

  “The public high school is abuzz,” Todd reported. “This afternoon, Billy Capriano quit the wrestling team.”

  “Why? What reason did he give?”

  “The kids I talked to said he didn’t give a reason. No one really knows what he said to the coach. But the coach got mad. People heard him shouting.”

  “So the inference can be drawn the coach believed Billy’s reason for quitting the team was inadequate.”

  “Any reason short of Billy’s having Saint Vitus’ dance and the seven-year itch simultaneously would be inadequate, Da. Billy really is a very good wrestler. Even at his age, Billy was expected to make it to the state championship matches in his weight class. I mean we’re talking regional, maybe national championship when he’s a senior. Major college scholarships.”

  “That good, is he?”

  “He walked home alone.”

  “What did he do there?”

  “I don’t know. His father came home a little before fivethirty. Dinner.”

  “Did angry noises emanate from the house?”

  “No. At six-forty, Billy left the house, alone.”

  “Ha! Now we’re gettin’ into the good stuff!”

  “He walked to St. Jude’s Church. They have catechism classes Monday nights.”

  “Oh.”

  “He left the church at eight-thirty. Walked home alone.”

  “Straight home?”

  “Yes.”

  “He spoke to no one on the street? Stopped in nowhere?”

  Todd shrugged. “The kid’s a straight arrow, Da.”

  “Have you had something to eat?”

  “I made myself a corned-beef sandwich. Milk.”

  “With plenty of Colman’s Hot Mustard?”

  “I don’t have your leather mouth.”

  “Got your homework done?”

  “I did it in the bushes beside Billy’s house. Don’t blame me if some teacher calls about my handwriting. The ground is cold.”

  “Good lad.”

  “Following people is boring.”

  Flynn said: “Then be a leader.”

  Back in bed, Flynn turned out his reading light.

  He cuddled Elsbeth.

  “Nice kids,” he said. “Think it’s time we got married?”

  “Again? We came from such different backgrounds, places, you and I, over eighteen months we had to get married in three different countries!”

  “That’s right,” Flynn said. “We’ve each been married three times. I forgot. We’re much more fashionable than I thought.”

  “Three times married to each other. Without benefit of divorce!”

  “Golly. Grover might charge me with bigamy.”

  “May your paperwork never catch up with you, Frannie.”

  “Not to worry,” Flynn said. “I died three times, too. And I can prove it!”

  “Next time,” Elsbeth said, “leave me insurance.”

  After Elsbeth fell into the deep breathing of sleep, Flynn asked himself, “Now, why on earth would the Capriano kid quit the wrestling team?”

  His dreams that night touched upon some of the rigorous physical exercises he had been put through as a schoolboy in Germany. He had enjoyed that. He didn’t even remember ever
being too cold in the snow.

  EIGHT

  “God!” Grover pressed the palms of his hands against each side of his head. “Flynn! What are you doing to me?”

  After Professor Loveson’s lecture, Grover had preceded Flynn out of the lecture hall, rushed down the stairs, and onto the porch overlooking Harvard Yard.

  “In pain are you?” Flynn studied Grover’s face in the gray morning light. His skin was grayer than the day. His eyes bulged slightly. During the lecture, Flynn had observed that Grover breathed in increasingly short strokes. “Do you think I’m torturing you? Well, I am. For your sins.”

  “Torturing me?” Grover looked up the steps at Flynn. Students whirled around them between classes. “That was wonderful!”

  “What was?”

  “That old man. Professor Lovely?”

  “Loveson.”

  “Well, Loveson’s a lovely old man.”

  “Is he?”

  “I’ve never heard anyone talk that way in my whole life!”

  “I daresay.”

  Driving Flynn from Winthrop to Harvard Square, Grover had protested all the way. His main point was that it was bad enough to use a sergeant of police and a City of Boston vehicle to commute Flynn, “So your wife can use the station wagon,” but downright illegal to be using a Boston police vehicle in the City of Cambridge. What were they doing in Cambridge anyway? And at Harvard yet?

  As a sergeant of Boston police, Grover stressed to Flynn that he had much better things to do than to ride around outside his own jurisdiction. For one, he was on a committee to prepare for the Policepersons’ Ball.

  Flynn cursed his impeccable hearing.

  Nevertheless, he invited Grover to attend Professor Loveson’s lecture with him. It was a raw day.

  “I don’t know all the words he used, everything he was talking about,” Grover admitted, “or the names he used, people he referred to, but I was able to follow along pretty well. He talked for an hour straight!”

  “Fifty minutes.”

  “And he began at the beginning with an idea I didn’t much understand, and then he told me more and more about that idea, the history of it, where it came from, what everybody has had to say about it, back and forth, and by the time he finished I felt like I really understood what he had said in the first place! It was like listening to a piece of music! You know, it all hung together.”

  Flynn stared at his assistant. “And what is the idea that so excites you?”

  “Well, first . . .” Grover scraped his shoe on the bottom step. “That an idea comes from someplace. That it has a history. That it keeps turning up, like, when it’s needed. Except every time it turns up, it’s fuller somehow. There’s more to it.”

  “What idea in particular?”

  Grover said, “I never knew spaghetti originally came from China.”

  “I see.”

  Grover’s eyes were downcast. Was he embarrassed? “I never knew there’s always been an idea of God.”

  Flynn could think of nothing to say.

  Grover’s eyes flashed up at Flynn. “It’s the idea that’s important?”

  “And the attitude behind the idea,” Flynn ventured. “The need for the idea.”

  “God.” Grover looked at the other students coming and going. “It’s the idea that’s important?”

  “That’s the . . .” Flynn could not bring himself to say it.

  “Is that what all the kids here are studying?”

  Flynn said, “I’m not sure.”

  “I thought they were just studying to be doctors and lawyers and such like.”

  “That comes later,” Flynn said. “Traditionally, first they’re taught to think.”

  “What a gentleman,” Grover marveled. “So gentle. You can tell the way he speaks. Softly, but he makes you listen. He has such respect for all those people he mentioned! He didn’t put anyone down! Though I think he likes some better than others.”

  “Objectivity, it’s called.”

  “Flynn, what are we doing here?”

  “With Professor Loveson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A person or persons unknown may be threatening Professor Loveson.”

  “Threatening his life?”

  “I’m not sure. Assaulting his well-being, his peace of mind, anyway.”

  Grover’s jaw tightened. His eyes flashed. “That fine old gentleman?”

  “That ‘fine old gentleman’ is not cooperating with us at all, at all.”

  “Is it true you found a kid with his head nailed to a tree?”

  “Yes. His ear nailed to a tree.”

  “What’s that got to do with the professor?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to know what he thought about it. I wanted to open him up a bit, to us.”

  “It wasn’t one of your kids, was it?”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  Was this the first time Flynn ever saw Grover smile? “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Sergeant, I have a full schedule of appointments here today, beginning with lunch with the dean. Why don’t you go do whatever, to prepare for the Policepersons’ Ball? I’ll find my own way back to the office.”

  “Lucky bastards.” Grover glared at the young people milling around in front of the building. “Do they get to feel this buzz in the head all the time? It’s a pleasure!” He turned his glare on Flynn. “If anyone, anyone at all, touches one hair on that great man’s head, I’ll tie him naked in a sack of tomcats and throw him in the Charles River!”

  Flynn finally said, “That’s the idea.”

  “Isn’t education a foine thing?” In the Harvard Faculty Club dining room Flynn pronounced his brogue. “Sure, everyone should be exposed to it at least once.”

  Across the table from him, Dean Wincomb put boredom rather than humor in his eyes. “Are you a university man yourself, Flynn?”

  “I can only claim to a short seminary training.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I suspected certainty stunts growth.”

  The dean’s eyes changed to appreciation.

  Then the dean said, “Would you like to try the horse meat?”

  “I pray I’ve eaten my last horse. And dog. And snake. And broccoli.” Viciously, he rolled the R.

  The dean ordered lamb chops; Flynn, a venison stew.

  “The President’s office asked me to lunch with you today. I have no idea why. Of course we did meet last night, at my house.”

  “We did not meet,” Flynn said. “I met no one at your house last night but Professor Louis Loveson. I had to introduce myself to him.”

  “Yes. Well . . . Therefore I’m guessing you wish to talk to me about Professor Louis Loveson.”

  The venison stew was brought well before the lamb chops. “Dean, is there reason here for anyone, or any group of people, to be threatening Professor Loveson?”

  “‘Threatening’ him! Good God, no. You don’t mean to tell me . . . Actually threatening him?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Is that why we’re having lunch? The President thinks someone might actually be threatening Louis Loveson? Really threatening him? Why would anyone do that?”

  “Money is a motive for many crimes. So is position. Prestige. Career advancement.”

  “Not in a university, Flynn! I think you can trust us to be a little more . . .”

  “A little more what?”

  “Trust us to keep a schooled perspective on such things as greed, ambition.”

  Flynn tilted his head. “You say that with a straight face?”

  The chops were served.

  The stew had cooled.

  “I was engaged in no conversation at your house last evening, Dean, except, briefly, with Professor Loveson. Would you list for me the topics of conversation you had with those with whom you did speak?”

  “Well . . . Well . . .” A blue tinge came into the dean’s face. “Well, no! I won’t.”

  “Did you speak on
intellectual matters?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of students?”

  “Surely.”

  “Of new writings?”

  “We must have.”

  “Remarkable,” Flynn said. “Every such meeting I’ve ever attended has been devoted to career politics. Your little get-together last evening must have been a first.”

  “I really don’t know what this is about, Mr. Flynn—”

  “Nor do I. Trying to get my footing, as it were. What, simply, do people have against Professor Louis Loveson?”

  “For starters, he’s rather the President’s pet.”

  “And that causes resentment?”

  “You might say so. If he weren’t, for example, I might be having lunch at my desk playing a computer game rather than sitting here listening to your grave suspicions regarding university politics. Are you familiar with the game, ‘What if . . . ?,’ Flynn? You know, What if John Kennedy hadn’t been shot? What if—?”

  “No, sir. I have come to assume that is the province of contemporary journalism.”

  The dean frowned. “Loveson’s a good topic for the ‘What if . . . ?’ game. What if he had retired when he was supposed to?”

  “What if, indeed?” asked Flynn.

  “For one thing, his academic chair, the prestigious Samson Chair, would have been vacated.”

  “And awarded to whom?”

  “There are several sterling candidates.”

  “Would your name be among them?”

  “No. I haven’t the reputation.”

  “Loveson did not retire as expected,” stated Flynn. “Last night he indicated to me that was because he feels he must defend himself, his work, by staying on.”

  “Some consider his work indefensible.”

  “Do you?”

  “Oh, it enjoyed its fashion. One might see it as the intellectual swan song of the white male. You know, Western culture tied into a neat package.”

  Flynn nodded. “Again, talking with him last night, I had the impression he cares a great deal for his students. Past, present, and future.”

  “I suspect the old boy feels he must defend them against the barbarians at the gates.”

  “And who are these barbarians?”

  “Anyone who isn’t a white male in the Judeo-Christian tradition. All rather medieval, of course. Anyway, he has damned few students at present. Seven, I think is the number. We have him in the smallest lecture hall available. We’d put him in a telephone booth, if we could still find one with a door on it.”