Will Lavender - Obedience

“My name’s Polly,” the girl said. And then she laughed. It was a mad and desperate cackle, a screech. Someone was in the building with them, firing up a kiln, the growl of the fire echoing off the wide walls. “I’ve told you that twice already.”

Whatever the hell she wants, he thought. I’ll play along.

“How’s Mike?” he asked.

“Mike,” the girl said. “Goddamn Mike. I wish people would stop bringing him up. I’m through with him. I told them-I love Mike, but he’s so… flawed. It’s just the way he is. That’s Mike, you know.”

Brian let it sink in. He was losing himself here and there, falling into little sharp black trenches every so often. Daylight was coming in through the windows now, and he wondered what time it was.

“Where are you?” he asked the girl. Her face was still on her chin, her eye still on him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean where the fuck are you, bitch. Where are you? We’re all trying to find you.”

“Brian, this is crazy. I don’t know-I don’t-”

“Stop fucking with me. He sent you here, didn’t he? Williams. That’s why you’re hiding your face. That’s why you’re scared to show yourself.” He was sitting up now, putting his shirt back on, standing up so that he was over her. There was something about the way the girl demurred to him, stayed on her knees below him, that infuriated Brian. “Stand the fuck up!” he shouted. “Get up, goddamn you! You whore. You two-bit whore. You-”

There was somebody watching him. Some guy. Just behind another kiln, standing there with a mug of steaming coffee, looking right at him. That broke his trance. Brian came back to the world, floated down through the rafters and the glass dust and the smoke to the floor of the building. The descent buckled his knees.

“Fuck this,” he finally slurred.

And then he walked out, leaving the girl behind.

“So,” Professor Williams said. He was sitting today in a rolling chair in the front of the class. He taken down the podium and had his feet kicked up on the front table. He apologized for missing last week, but he told them that his son had gotten the flu and had to be taken to the pediatrician. A young son, thought Mary. But no pictures in his office. “Any theories?”

“The name Pig,” Dennis Flaherty said.

“Yes?” Williams asked.

“Do you know anyone by that name?”

“There is a man in DeLane named Pig. A former cop. Now he’s a night watchman at the marina. He helped me…research some of my clues, so I paid homage to him.”

“Ah,” Dennis said softly. Mary looked down the row at him. She thought he looked tired, different somehow. He caught her stare and held it, tried to impart something to her, but then he quickly looked away, down at the legal pad that he had balanced on his briefcase.

“Anything else?” the professor asked.

“In the pictures of Polly’s Civic,” said a student behind Mary. Immediately Mary felt herself flush. She hadn’t even looked closely at that one because she had been too focused on the other. Was there a clue in the car photograph, something that she needed to know?

“Yes?”

“There’s a railroad track in the right-hand corner,” the student went on.

“And?”

“And so that could support a staged crime. Her father could have taken her out to Stribbling Road-”

“Are people still on that?” Dennis sighed.

“-and slipped her away on the train.”

“This isn’t nineteen twenty-five, Ms. Davies. People still hop boxcars where you’re from?”

When the girl fell silent, Mary began to speak. But before she could say anything Dennis said, “I want to go back to the ‘Place’ clue.”

“Go on,” Williams led him.

“Pig and Polly had a thing,” Dennis said.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” mused the professor. “Here’s a guy about fifteen years older than Polly. He clearly-clearly-isn’t in her class. She’s beautiful, he’s…not.” A few people laughed. Williams rolled his chair around here and there but kept his feet kicked up. “She’s got a family, whereas Pig grew up on the streets. He’s a tough guy. But she sees something in him. What is it?”

“He takes care of her,” a girl said from the back row. “He’s like a father to her.”

“A father,” Williams said. “Go on.”

“She was drawn to him because she had a rocky relationship with her own dad?”

“The same dad who was waiting up for her the last night she was seen?” he asked. “Try again.”

“He protects her.” Dennis had picked up the loose thread. “Mike hits her, abuses her, is generally nasty to her. And Pig is there to nurse her back to health. He tends to her wounds, her broken heart.”

“Sugar daddy,” said Brian. He had his head down and was looking at Williams from the side of his gaze.

“So they were fucking,” Williams said. The word jarred the class. Some students giggled nervously. Williams apparently didn’t register this strangeness, the ripple it created when a professor used language that was so un-professor-like. “They had an affair. How does this change things?”

The girl from the back again: “Pig fell in love with her.”

“And?”

“And he threatened to kill Mike if he touched her again. They were seen arguing by the pool.”

“Maybe Polly was obedient to Pig,” Williams said.

“How do you mean?” asked Dennis.

“I mean maybe he held some authority over her. Maybe he was demonstrating his authority in everything he did. How he dressed, how he spoke to her. Perhaps he made her afraid to defy him.”

“Maybe,” Mary said, “he planted the seeds of the abuse in her head.”

“That’s really interesting, Ms. Butler. And that’s pure Milgram.”

“Who?” someone asked.

“Stanley Milgram. You haven’t seen the statue outside the Orman Library? A dedication to Milgram. He came here in the seventies as a visitor of Dean Orman. He lectured right in this room in February of nineteen seventy-six. Do you just walk past that statue without noticing the inscription? Why must students have such tunnel vision?”

“We have a library?” said a boy in the back. The class laughed, but Williams only grinned and shook his head.

“Milgram conducted behavior experiments at Yale in the sixties,” Williams continued. “He found that people are willing to go along with anything if an authority figure tells them to do it. Perhaps Pig was Polly’s authority figure.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Dennis.

“Let’s test it then,” Williams said. “What if you were told you were going to fail this class if you didn’t, say, stand on your head in the corner. Would you do it?”

“No,” Dennis said. Mary saw him blanch-she knew he was lying.

“Okay,” the professor continued. “What if someone of tremendous authority at this institution, say Dean Orman, came into this room right now and told you that you would be expelled if you didn’t reach across and pull Ms. Butler’s hair. Would you do that?”

“Well, it’s not my head,” Dennis said.

“Exactly!” Williams laughed. “Milgram proved that we will go to great lengths to hurt people if we are told to do it by someone of influence. After all, they know best, right? Dean Orman knows best. He is an authority figure, is he not? He is learned, and his education makes him a figure of control.”

“The Nazis,” Brian said.