John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

“I’ll tell you what you’re missing, Royce,” he said. He leaned toward him, dead serious. “You think there were three of us yesterday — you, me, the girl. But there were four of us. That’s what you’re missing.”

Royce glanced at him. “Bullshit.”

“Call Hannah,” he said. “Ask her.”

“You crazy bastard! I got a hundred dollars says—”

“Call her,” Craine said.

Royce stared at him, then down at the cigarette. “You telling me that murderer she thinks she saw in Chicago—”

“I don’t say it was the same man,” Craine said carefully. “I’m only saying there was somebody, and he was there again this morning when I took the girl to breakfast, and if you’ll just move your ass to that phone and call Hannah—”

Royce thought about it, taking slow drags on the cigarette, then pursed his lips, ground the cigarette out, and looked over at the phone on the desk. “You’re trying to make me believe,” he said, “that when we put her in the sandwich who you thought I was was—”

Craine said nothing, crazy with glee, heart racing.

At last Royce stood up and went over to the phone. He stared at the dial as if he’d never really looked at one before, then lifted the receiver, jutted out one finger and dialed.

Craine drank while Royce talked, laughing inwardly, like a witch. When Royce was finished he came back and stood in front of Craine with his hands on his hips. “They got him down there now,” he said. “Meakins brought him in this afternoon. Havin a little talk with him.”

“No foolin,” Craine said.

Royce nodded to himself. “Some graduate student, Hannah says. Girl had a class with him.”

“Hot dog!” Craine said. “We should get in on it.”

Royce was still shaking his head, grinning now. His right hand came up to scratch the hair on his chest. “You foxy old shit,” he said. For an instant, his face clouded. “All the same you could’ve blown my damn head off.”

“I know that,” Craine said, but he couldn’t stop grinning. “You got your car down there?”

Royce nodded, scratching on. “I still don’t believe you,” he said. “I don’t believe one fucking word of it.”

Carefully, Craine eased himself up out of the chair, capping the bottle, pushing it down into his suit coat pocket, then poking his pipe into the pocket inside. “It’s right of them to bring him in for talk,” he said. “We’re only human. We make mistakes.” He chuckled.

Royce waited at the window, looking out at the gusty storm, dark as night now and gathering more force, while Craine put on his overcoat and, at the last minute, picked up the heavy white Bible from the bed, looked at it a moment, and decided to carry it along.

Royce said, coming over to leave with him, “You taking that with you?”

Craine said, “I take it with me everywhere. For luck. Belonged to a world-famous gambler, you know that?”

“Bullshit,” Royce said, “I saw you buy it.”

Craine frowned. “That’s true,” he said. “Well, we all make mistakes. We’re only human.” He held the door open and Royce went out, just a little unsteady. Craine followed, switching off the light as he went, and closed the door behind them. “You should think about it, Emmit,” he said, “—what it means to be human. I remember when I was young, in the navy, I used to stand at the rail of the ship, and I’d look out at the endless, starlit sea—”

Royce glanced at him, missed a step, caught the bannister, and swore under his breath.

On the street, gusts of rainy wind made signs turn and creak. The street lamps went out for a moment, then back on. A car went by hissing, and Craine — mistaking what it was — at first jumped. When they were seated in the car, he said, “We’re vulnerable, Emmit.” He waved in the general direction of the buildings, the darkened sky. “Everything’s vulnerable.” He noticed that the edges of the pages of the Bible were wet. Carefully, like a man on a precipice, he set the Bible in his lap, unbuttoned his overcoat, suit coat, and shirt, then lifted the Bible, fitted it in next to the skin of his chest, stretched the shirt over it and fastened the buttons, then buttoned the suit coat and overcoat. Royce drove hunched over, having difficulty seeing through the rain.

Halfway to the university he was jumped again — suddenly, without warning, as usual — by his colon. “I don’t believe it!” he whispered. He strained against the pressure with all his might, about to explode, nothing in the world he could do but pray, not that Gerald Craine was a praying man — pain shooting up through his intestines to the gouge from his colostomy bag, far worse than usual — no question about it, Craine was in for it! — and floored the accelerator, then at once let up again, alarmed by the jouncing as the truck sped up, jiggling his abdomen, and like a glider pilot when the wind drops from under him, he sat balanced, weightless, his expression frozen, until abruptly, soundlessly, the damage was done. Shocked, on fire with righteous indignation, Craine slammed the brakes on, violently swearing and spinning the steering wheel, slid the truck around one-eighty degrees, half tipped over like a Western-movie stagecoach — by accident striking no curbside trees, parked cars, or pedestrians — and roared, blue exhaust clouding thickly behind him, for home, the bathtub, and new clothes. Still furious, several swigs drunker, by no means philosophical, he started out again.

He parked in the library parking lot, asked directions twice, and cut through the woods in the direction pointed out to him. The skirt of his overcoat kept snagging on branches sticking out into the path, and once, drunkenly missing a turn, he almost stepped on lovers. He tipped his hat, backing off. “Excuse me.”

The English Department was a lavish suite of offices on the third floor of Faner, the huge new building of poured concrete at the edge of the woods, a structure like a larger-than-life-sized battleship, concrete wedges and wings flying out at peculiar angles — ramps, high patios and bridges, huge light globes — in its shadow a bazaar of vegetable and fruit carts (nubbly and worm-holed, strictly organic), stalls of ceramics, paintings, blown glass, and loomwork. It would make a fine setting for a Hollywood thriller, he thought, pausing, looking up at free-standing balconies, vast sweeps of window, trying to get his bearings. At the far end of Faner he could make out the Planet X towers of the Student Union and, far beyond those, the walkways and blast chimneys of the chemistry building. To his left lay the “old campus,” castlelike buildings with battlements and towers, formal gardens, huge trees, brick walkways and fountains, the wide sweep of lawn where Old Main had once stood before somebody, at the time of the troubles, had burned it to the ground. Beyond the library, back through the woods behind him, there were places even better for a murder film — the radio, TV, and theater building, the plywood and Fuller-dome slum thrown up by the Design Department, the campus lake, smooth as glass in the dappled shade of trees.

He started up the ramp, surprisingly steep, helping himself along with the aluminum railing. The students, no doubt some of them graduate students, looked to Craine like young children, junior-high-schoolers, maybe. One out of ten, maybe twenty, was in a wheelchair; another one out of ten was blind. He passed them in silence, eyes straight ahead, like a man who profoundly disapproved.

Peeking through the glass into the English Department, he had a brief attack of nerves. The place was very classy, like a dean’s office — carpet on the floor, three desks for receptionists or secretaries, whatever, near one of them a complicated telephone switchboard — and just inside the door soft, leatherlike chairs, coffee tables, ashtrays, heavy wooden bookcases in pleasant disarray: fat, hardbound books, old magazines. Student workers moved in and out, talking for a minute with the secretaries, carrying away papers, fat envelopes. Sometimes one of the doors behind the secretaries’ desks would pop open and a man would poke his head out — the chairman, perhaps, or some other official — and one of the secretaries would jump up to run some errand for him, or would reach for her phone. Craine frowned, his eyebrows ramming toward his nose. Three secretaries, thirty thousand dollars at least; four student workers, say two hundred a month, and God only knew how many more of them in the woodwork — say forty-five thousand dollars in office help, conservative estimate; all for what? — to get grants, play politics, save and increase the Scotch-tape, rubber-band, and paper-clip budget! He heard himself letting out a growl and clamped his mouth shut.