by Kluge, P. F.
“I told you about Kerstetter,” Mark said.
“The mortician.”
“When he left he said he’d send me some things Harry Stribling wrote. Unpublished. Odds and ends.” Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “This is for you. We can talk about it...there’s a reference to a novel by a French writer. Benjamin Constant. Otherwise...it speaks for itself.”
“Okay.”
“It’s about Hiram Wright,” he said. “Turns out...I’m pretty sure...it’s about your father. And your mother.”
Hiram Wright was waiting for me, sitting just inside the door of Stribling Hall.
“How are you, sir?” I asked. He was always happy to see me, like I made his day. Underneath, though, he seemed depressed.
“I can’t walk,” he said. “That’s today’s news.” He pointed towards a wheelchair next to the door. “G-Man looks after me at home. Security carries me up the steps when I come to work. Quite a spectacle.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Anything they can do?”
“Issue me wings,” he snapped back. “Listen, Billy, could you wheel me out onto Middle Path?”
“Sure.” It took me and Harry Carstairs to maneuver him down the steps. But it was good being outside. Spring in Ohio.
“That’s better,” he said. We were right on Middle Path, under the maples. “Back when I was in my prime, there came a year when I got fed up with student papers. It happens to all of us. This was my year. Maybe I realized that student writing skills were headed south, that the papers I was getting were all shake-and-bake.”
“Shake and bake?”
“Students waiting until the night before, sitting down in front of a word processor with their lecture notes on one side and their books, all peed upon with yellow marker, on the other and you know...a little of this, a little of that...”
“I see.”
“Maybe it was them. Maybe it was me. Or the weather. You know what it was like? Just like today.” He waved a hand in front of him, sweeping from left to right, like Thomas Mitchell in Gone With the Wind, standing in front of Tara, telling Scarlett about the love of the land, if you’re Irish it’s in you. I took in what he was taking in. Everyone was saying they couldn’t remember a May as fine as this one. There were violets and daffodils around the church, so woven into the lawn you’d think the grass was blossoming. And those rows of maples, gradually turning the path into a shaded tunnel which the seniors would pass through at a graduation we never thought would come. Around town, there were flowers in all the trees, flowering pears and plums and cherries and crab apples, whole trees that were nothing but flowers right now, each one as sweet-smelling as an orchard.
“Anyway, I decided to give a new kind of final exam,” Wright said. “Instead of having them fill blue books, which I would have to mark, students were invited to take a little walk with me, a walk around campus to chat with me about the books we’d read. Walking the plank, they called it. It didn’t catch on, needless to say.”
“Is this my final exam?” I asked.
“I think not. More likely, mine.” He studied me, waiting for me to take his cue. “How’s your new job?”
“Fine,” I said. “I guess you had something to do with that.”
“Just a little,” he said. They’d made me the new head of security, replacing Tom. So parents would relax, the college had contracted a private security firm, mostly retired or off-duty troopers and cops. Men with weapons were chalking tires, stamping palms at parties, counting beer kegs. By all accounts they got—and took—much less shit than we did in the old days. For the time being, I was what they called liaison.
“It’s not what you’d call the busiest job in the world,” I allowed.
“More time to read,” he said. “And write.”
“And think,” I said. “Would you like to know what I’ve been thinking, Professor?”
“Of course I would.”
“It’s just a hunch. And it’s nothing that’ll change anything. Still interested?”
“Please.”
“My hunch is that Sherwood Graves was half right. Tom wasn’t alone. He was working with someone else. Or for someone else. And it wasn’t Averill Hayes. Professor Wright, it was you, sir.”
He didn’t flinch one bit. He nodded, like this was something he’d been waiting for. “I might have to change your grade, Billy,” he said. “Keep talking.”
“All year, in and out of class, you kept saying how love and hate are tied together. ‘Symbiotic and inseparable,’ those were your words. Reminded me of an old movie, Night of the Hunter, where Robert Mitchum has L-O-V-E written on the knuckles of one hand and H-A-T-E on the other and he showed the two of them struggling against each other but always in touch, like a pair of wrestlers. He was this corrupt preacher, a killer preacher...”
“Is that what you think I am? A corrupt preacher? A killer?”
“Not corrupt, I’d never say that. But something else. That’s what I’m trying to work out here. Graves thought the murders were done because someone got greedy, like Ave Hayes. Or maybe someone hated the college and, God knows, we found lots of haters. Including Graves himself. But then it came to me, an idea I can’t shake which is that it wasn’t hate or greed. It was love. And that brought me straight to you, sir.”
“I see,” he said. “Well...I do love this place.”
“What’s more...I think you wanted me to come to you. You were leading me to you, all along, leading everybody, maybe. That night you spoke to the students, the parents, the TV cameras, asking yourself was it something you did, something too harsh or maybe too kind. Damn straight it was. You were dropping clues left and right, you were confessing right then and there to everybody who listened. But you were talking to me. Inviting me into your class. You figured we’d be sitting here like this someday. So I guess this is a final exam. How’d I do?”
“Interesting. But, anyone would have to say, weak on proof. As a matter of fact, unprovable. At the least you need a confession from Tom. Do you think Tom will be confessing, Billy?”
You should have seen how he looked into me, when he asked me. Turned the tables, without warning, without half trying. I wasn’t able to hold things in like he was. I’m sure he saw something on my face.
“I don’t think they’ll be getting a confession from Tom,” I admitted.
“Too bad,” Wright said. “He was a man who loved to talk.”
“He talked plenty alright, professor. He told me you could turn the lights on for me. What I’m wondering is if he talked to you, before all this started.”
He sat there, thinking it over. I watched his eyes as they glanced from one place to another, back to me and off again, across the grass, over the tops of the trees, into the classroom buildings, into the woods that sloped down to the river and back to me. Almost like a caress. He didn’t want to kill the college. He wanted to save it.
“I’ll give you an A-minus,” he said. “What now, Billy? Do I get that one phone call before you cart me off?”
“I just want you to tell me what happened,” I said. What I knew was more important than what I did. I wanted to know. I was still his student.
“Alright then,” he said. “But what I tell you is for your sake. Not mine. I want you to know that. Tom wasn’t working for me. If anything, it was the other way around.”
The past wasn’t dead alright, not when Hiram Wright could close his eyes and shut out Warren Niles’ cheerful, healthy college—the new labs and dorms and swimming pool—and return in memory to the smaller, poorer place he’d loved. If a person could love a place the way you love a person, this was a place that you could love that way, almost hold it in your arms. Five hundred students, forty faculty, up on a hill in the sticks, heart of Ohio, where the nights were dark and the stars were bright and the cornfields rolled away forever.
People were closer in the old days, all sorts of unlikely friendships, between a professor and say, two brothers who were college
employees, who shared nothing with him in terms of books or jokes or politics. It wasn’t because the professor was being sporting and democratic. Chances were, they’d never vote the same in an election—a professor, a campus cop and a college maintenance man. Or sit around a table and share a meal, he couldn’t even picture what would be on their plates or in their glasses, they were so different. But what brought them together was those autumn mornings that came back to him, those crisp, focused dawns, that old love. What else to call it? Oh, those miles he’d walked along ridgelines, across fields, along runs that fed into the river, ceremonies of pure joy that drew and held them so that, all the rest of the year, the dreary inward winters, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t springtimes, the heavy, nearly tropical summers, none could compare with those October hunting days they shared with each other and the land.
“I loved your father, Billy, he never knew how much, we never talked about it, it wouldn’t have worked to put it into words, because words were my business and to say something would be like giving a gift that he couldn’t return. I think he loved being around me, just for that, the way I spoke. Thrilled to be in the presence of a professor. Honored. But not as much as I was honored by him. His instincts, his grace. When we went out, his sense of direction, his feelings for the land, the weather, the wind even...”
“How’d Tom fit in?” I asked.
“Tom!” He laughed at the memory. “Tom just included himself. No saying no. Jabbering, joking, no shutting him up. The looks your father gave him. The looks he gave me, sorry about this, professor, sorry about my loudmouth brother. To Tom, silence was time wasted, unless you filled it with words. A terrible hunter. An early-warning system for wildlife. A wretched shot. I guess his marksmanship improved, just lately...”
There it was again, hanging in the air, another silence, waiting for me to fill it with words.
“Happy times,” Wright resumed when I didn’t oblige him. “Went on for years. I thought we’d go on forever. At least until we couldn’t walk, like I can’t walk now.”
“What happened?”
“I destroyed it. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Yes. I want to hear it from you. But I should tell you—it only seems fair—I already know.” I took out an envelope and showed it to him. “I got this from Mark May, who figured I’d be interested. He got it from Duncan Kerstetter, who got it out of his collection of Harry Stribling’s unpublished papers. Here you go. A note from your old pal.”
“Old Harry,” Wright said. “A voice from the grave.”
“Those are the ones you said we should listen for,” I said. “In class. ‘Listen to the voices of the dead. Hear them. Heed them.’”
“So I did,” he nodded. He read it, a paragraph that I’d memorized.
“‘Droit de Seigneur...’” he read aloud. “‘Hiram’s downfall. The devil drives. Cunt hunting. He quotes Benjamin Constant. ‘It hurts them so little and it gives us such pleasure.’ Now, his friend drives a truck into the river. Story here?’”
“Droit de Seigneur,” I said. “Mark May told me what it means. Right of the master. Nobility gets first shot at a peasant girl. Kind of an entitlement, in the old days.”
“Alright.” He sat a minute, shaking his head back and forth, reliving it the way he always relived the past when he thought about it, the past that wasn’t past. “It was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. Nothing compares with it. I had an affair...no...that’s not the word...oh damn, Billy...”
“Final exam,” I coached him. “Not the farmer’s daughter, was it? The farmer’s wife.” He still didn’t respond. “I used to hear you got around a little. A free-range chicken, they used to say. How did it happen?”
“Does it really matter?”
“I want to hear it,” I said. “You and my mother.”
“I had a house in Columbus that I know you know about. A hide-away. Not all my trips to town were to use the O.S.U. library.”
“A love nest, you mean?”
“In its time.”
“You took her there?”
“Listen, Billy. She deserves better...”
“You got that right.”
“Better from you, I mean. She was a decent woman. This was her only mistake.”
“Not your only mistake.”
“No. But my worst. May I proceed?”
I nodded. I hated him, just then. But I still respected him. I didn’t think hate and respect could go together. In his case, they did.
“We left to drive back here, after our little time together. Feeling wretched, soon as we were in the car. And then we saw Earl pull out behind us in that truck. He knew. He’d known. He could have stopped it, could have prevented her coming, could have burst in on us, could have done and gotten away with anything at all...”
He sat there, shaking his head, thinking of that hour’s drive home when anything might have happened and nothing did.
“He stayed behind us a safe distance. He kept his headlights on low. Signaled left and right turns. Obeyed the rules. Till, when we turned towards this place, fully expecting him to follow...he kept on going. Perhaps we should have followed him...When I reached the farm, your mother walked inside without a word. I never saw her again, not even by accident. Or your father. His ride ended in the river. I’ve always wondered if I could have met with him, talked to him...”
“You being so good with words...”
“It wouldn’t have worked. He’d have listened to me, I’m convinced. He’d have nodded. He’d shake my hand. Hug me. Forgive me. And then he’d have driven into the river. The best man I ever knew...”
“With friends like you...”
“Quiet, Billy.”
“You’re telling me to be quiet? You ripped a hole in my life!”
“Be quiet so you can listen. You haven’t heard the whole story. Your father left a note. A note I never saw. At least Tom said there was a note. Take care of my boy, that sort of thing...and more. I doubt the note. Not the knowledge.”
“Tom knew.”
“From the start. But he waited. That was Tom’s style. To scratch and chuckle and bide his time. He waited for years, all the time I thought it was over.”
“I thought you knew better. The past is...”
“...not over. Of course not. But private. For me to engage with on my own terms, at moments of my own choosing, which was often. No one needed to remind me to hate myself. Then, one night, he came into my office. He wanted his son to go to this college, on a scholarship. Essentially, he was applying on Tony’s behalf. He wanted me to make sure it happened. And, to underscore the importance, he told me what he knew...”
Another rest. You always had to wait with him. He walked through the past, but slowly. Maybe for the last time. The past might not be over. But he would be. Soon. The past would claim him. Tom the college bogey-man, Hiram its savior. Local history in the making. Local heroes.
“I told Tom I would not deny it. I would never lie. Two people were dead. I hadn’t killed them but they were dead because of me. That was the burden I would have to carry. I had thought of moving on, believe me. But I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving this place.”
“Tell me about Tony.”
“It was hopeless. He was a lovely boy, a natural, but his test scores were wretched. He might as well not have shown up. In some cases, he didn’t. He didn’t want to go to college, not here, not anywhere. He was a happy, loyal, lively youth who wanted to go to Bangkok in the worst way.”
“Hope to hell he got to Bangkok before he died.”
“He didn’t,” Wright said. “He didn’t get to Vietnam either. He died in Texas, Fort Hood. An automobile accident, off base. The closest thing Tony Hoover saw to a sniper was a Texas Ranger with a speed gun.”
“Shit,” I said. “That cheapens his death some, doesn’t it?”
“No, Billy. Not at all. It only makes it sadder.”
“It is sad,” I granted. “Could I ask you something? I’m just wonde
ring.”
“Of course,” he said. “Anything. No secrets between us.”
“So Tony wasn’t college material. You’ve made that clear. But could he have gotten through here, some way? I guess I’m asking, are all the kids we get here college material? I’ve been around. I’ve sat in your class. Aren’t there others like him?”
“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “By the dozens.”
“Well then,” I said. “That’s what really makes it sad, then.”
He didn’t answer me. Not with words. He only nodded.
“So what about Tom?” I asked.
“Tom remained as deferential and funny as ever, when we met in public. ‘How you doin’ professor?’ ‘Lookin’ good today, sir’ ‘What’s new in history?’ That sort of thing. I couldn’t look at him without being reminded of your parents. If I’d left, I’d have been rid of him. I didn’t believe he’d follow me. Tom’s not the kind to leave here. Is he?”
“No,” I said.
“A local boy, born and bred. Not the kind to run off.” He kept signaling, he had my number. I just sat. It was his turn to confess, not mine. “Last summer, a few weeks before the first students came back to campus, the football players and the rest, he visited me, down on the river. We talked about this and that. Everyone knew what happened to me, how Martha Yeats had engineered, how Warren had colluded. He asked if I was bitter and I did not deny it. Then he talked about himself and I realized how the issue of Tony had mutated, how the college had sent him to his death, the college had shrugged off the war, the college had offered a haven to rich kids, a sanctuary for goof-offs, for folks who acted ‘like their shit don’t stink.’ I saw in Tom a bitterness that matched, that outmatched my own. Then he said something. It was all he said and he said it on his way out the door. Understand that, Billy, he wasn’t consulting, he wasn’t asking permission, he wasn’t specific. He wasn’t asking, he was telling. ‘Professor,’ he said, ‘I believe it’s hunting season.’”