[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (5 page)

"Noise?"
Kelly frowned, wrinkling her nose as if a
distasteful odor had suddenly invaded the car. "I didn't
hear a thing, Pat, not a thing. I was dead to the world,
if you want to know the truth. I didn't hear you at all."
She glanced sideways, her face grey-shadowed by the
trees that closed overhead. "Pat. Oh, Pat, you got tanked up again, right?"

"Slightly."

"Great. Open mouth and insert foot. Hey, if I'd known I would have said
—"

"
It's
okay, Kelly, it's okay. Meant or not, I deserve it."

The overcast deepened, and she knew the next snow
fall would not be a mere dusting.

"
Y'know
," Kelly said, "you
oughta
try smoking
now and then instead of hitting the hard stuff. Relaxes the hell out of you . . . and it's a lot safer than alcohol.''

Pat said nothing. She had heard this same argument
from her several times, and though marijuana was not
as alien to her as Kelly seemed to believe, she'd never
been able to enjoy the highs she'd heard so lovingly
described. It had taken her only a handful of times to
learn that the equivalent of a single joint only put her to
sleep, and that, she'd decided, she could do just as well
on her own.

Kelly took the narrow service road around the buildings much slower than she'd driven out from town, commenting on the age of the students as if she were
decades older, being slightly too uninterested in the looks of the men and the marital status of the few
instructors they noted. Pat kept her comments to her
self, smiling instead and wondering if she were more
green-eyed than concerned about her roommate's easy
conquests of men. Abbey, though Kelly's age, had always seemed to her to be far older, far more in
control of her life. But maybe, she thought, that was an
outward compensation for her handicap
—Abbey Wagner
was deaf.

She had no time to speculate further. Kelly suddenly
slammed on the brakes behind Fine Arts and began a
flurry of promises to guard the station wagon with nine
lives, if not more, to leave a
tankful
of gas when she
and Abbey returned from work that evening, and an
eternal vow never to leave her own car vulnerable again.

Pat laughed and nodded through it all, slid out and
slammed the door. Immediately, she hurried through
the side entrance, not wanting to see how Kelly would
reverse the compact vehicle and leave the campus. I may have to ride in it, she thought, but I don't have to watch it.

On the other hand, Kelly's infectious high humor had served to dispel all the remnants of her gloom.
A silent
thanks, then, as she reached the second floor, and her
cheery "good afternoon" to her one-thirty class sur
prised even her with its firm optimistic ring.

The studio/classroom was large and well lighted, ar
ranged through several hectic semesters of trial and error to comfortably accommodate a full dozen stu
dents, their workbenches and materials, and a space of
her own behind a tall rattan screen she'd purchased
down on Centre Street three years before.

The class was gone.

Oliver and her friends had sensed her need for soli
tude and had left without their usual extra hour or so of
talk, of gossip, of worrying over how their latest projects
would be completed. They said nothing about an acci
dent, and Pat assumed the woman involved had not been from the Station. Forgot it as soon as Oliver
wished her solemn good luck, Harriet rose up quickly to
kiss her cheek, and Ben gave her one of his rare genu
ine smiles. The word was out. Though she had said
nothing to them herself for fear of jinxing the outcome,
it would have been a poor excuse for a campus if her
efforts had gone unnoticed, and unremarked, and the
day of
judgement
passed over without some sort of
reaction.

A lovely group, she thought as she wiped her hands on a well-used damp rag; a great bunch of people.

She stood in front of a sculpture she'd been working
on for several weeks, the stone taken from the same
area where she'd found the piece for Homer. It was just
under
forty inches high, the base ten inches wider, an
intricate series of looping curves and abrupt angles almost but not quite ready to be polished. She laid a
finger on her right cheek, a thumb to her lower lip, and
she studied it. Her head tilted in concentration. For those who asked she said it was untitled as yet; for
herself, however, it was Greg at his desk
—or rather, it
was his shape, his form, barely recognizable as human
to the untrained eye, a dizzying snap into focus once the
subject was revealed. It had taken her too long—with
too long to go for the span of her life—to study the
Moores
and the
Segals
, the
O'Keeffes
and the
Pollacks
, before she had developed a synthesis she felt comfort
able with, that suited her, that allowed her to slice away
what she thought was the mundane to what she hoped
was the artistic.

For the most part it worked.

She had already shown in Boston and New York, and
much to her parents' distress and amazement had sold
virtually every one of the pieces she could bear to part
with. But it was hard. It was close to physically painful.
These leavings of marble and stone, those castings in bronze, had often become such intense parts of her life
that there were times when she wondered why she
bothered with them at all. To see them admired on
pedestals, under spotlights, was one thing
—they were
children on stage, children on screen, children adults turned to watch as they raced down the street; to have them taken away forever, however, was a rending of a
soul already much battered.

Greg had known exactly what she'd been trying to
say when she hadn't been able to stop crying after the
sale of a piece only last November.

"You think I don't feel that way about my canvases?"
he'd asked. "But why bother doing it at all, Pat, if we're going to be the only ones to see them? It's like
. . . well, it's like Emily Dickinson. All that scribbling
on wrappings and newspapers, and nobody knew how
tremendous she was until after she'd died. My dear," and his voice deepened, his hands darting professorial to his lapels, "artists starving in garrets went out with
the nineteenth century. I may never get rich, but I'll be damned if I'm going to starve. And who the hell am I to
say this one can't enjoy . . . well, can't enjoy my children as much as I? If they don't leave the nest they're going to get moldy."

Maybe, she thought as she dropped a clean cloth over
the bench and cleaned up her tools, placing them in
racks affixed to the wall.
Maybe.
But it doesn't make it
any easier, does it. She hefted a large wooden mallet
thoughtfully,
then
set it on the floor just as a sharp
noise filled the room like a shriek. She froze, looked at
the mallet, shook herself in a scolding and stepped around the screen.

Greg stood on the threshold, smock off and patched
suit jacket on. His tie was askew, as was his smile. The
noise had been his fingernail drawn down the black
board where Pat made her class sketches.

"You aren't ready," he said in mild admonition.

She glanced at the tall windows. The sun had already
slipped below the trees, the
stormclouds
' grey now
turned to gunmetal. The dim light was cold. The sky
seemed to be less than a hand's breadth above the highest branches.

"It's beautiful, isn't it," he said quietly.

She nodded. It was.

"So," he said with a clap of his hands, "which role do we play, Doc?
The lions or the Christians?
If you want my opinion, I hate raw meat."

She shook a fist at him, hurried to the row of sinks by the door and washed her face and hands in cold water. A brush snagging through her hair, her own
smock to its hooks, and she picked up her handbag,
turning her back momentarily so he couldn't see the pat
she gave to Homer's head. Then she took hold of his arm and led him away, one hand trailing behind to switch off the lights.

The corridor was deserted. The lights inlaid in the
walls and covered by white glass had been dimmed. A
red light over the fire exit glared cyclopean.

The conference room was in the corner down the hall
from her office, but when they reached it he surprised
her by moving on toward the front, past her office, past
his own room as well.

"Round and round," he said when she looked quiz
zically at him. "For luck we'll pretend it's a carousel,
okay?" He gestured toward the curved wall of the
auditorium. "A peeling lion there," he said, pointing.
"A llama, an ostrich, a bench for two, one for four."
They were on the east side, darker, all the rooms empty,
a chill that seemed writhing in the recesses of the
ceiling. "Here a chick, there a chick, and over there a
purple galumph."

"A galumph? What in hell is
a galumph
?"

"A galumph," he announced, "is a sacred African
animal much like the spotted leopard. The primary difference, however, is that it doesn't have spots, and it
isn't a cat, and it would rather eat junk than anything
like food." He stopped and stepped in front of her, his
hands on her shoulders. "Much like Ford Danvers,
wouldn't you say?"

She giggled. She felt like an idiot marching around the corridor, but she giggled as he took her elbow and led her at last to the conference-room door.

The light crept into the hall, and as she approached the threshold she looked up at him and stopped sud
denly. He went ahead and turned around, his face drift
ing abruptly to black.

"What?" he asked.

She didn't know. Not positively. But she touched a
finger to his tie, nudging it into place. "There's some
thing wrong, Greg. What is it?"

"Not now," he whispered loudly. "Good lord, Pat,
they're listening in there."

"They're not it, are they?" And suddenly, without
any proof, with nothing more than a flickering pain that
had escaped his control and flared across his face, she
knew. "There was an accident on Mainland last night.
You . . ."

"Yeah," he said. "I knew her." Then he grinned and laid a palm to her cheek. "However, it is not to
worry. Right now I intend to find out if I have a job tomorrow. If I don't, my dear, I'm putting a cot in your
office."

He left her then, and entered the room. A murmur of
voices, and his laugh leavened the air.

There was a brief moment when she thought him
remarkably brave to carry on like that, another when
she astonished herself by thinking him horridly callous.
But her last thought as she followed was a wondering
about the dead girl, and what she had to do with Greg
Billings.

SHE almost panicked. Standing alone in the corridor, listening to Greg chatting with the others as if
nothing momentous were about to be discussed, she
almost lost her nerve. Her arms folded across her stom
ach and she hugged herself, anticipating a bout of nau
sea that did not come, wondering if her face were
flushed, her lips trembling,
her
posture more like a
supplicant than one who has courage. It was irrational,
this sudden attack, and it came close to shaming her.
She had always prided herself on being a woman who
had never flinched, who had taken the slings of a man's
world and caught them in her bare hand, flung them
back with a smile not of contempt but of competence.
And now she was behaving as though the room ahead
contained the gas chamber, not a table and chairs and a
handful of gossiping colleagues.

And then, just as Greg called out to her, she knew
what she was doing.
Again.
Anticipating failure so that
her possible conquest might be all the sweeter.

She scowled at herself, recomposed her features into what she hoped was confidence, and entered, adding a
deliberate swing to her mid-calf skirt as she cut right
toward her chair that made her smile.

It was going to be all right, she told herself nervously. Not to worry. It's only your life, after all, and
she jammed her tongue between her teeth to keep from
giggling.

The room was the smallest on the floor, barely large
enough for a light pine oval table and the dozen chairs that surrounded it. On the plaster walls were prints and
oils of the college's previous chief administrators, a
sailing vessel in Bristol harbor, and the school as it had been at its founding, in 1904. Her place was midway to the chairman's seat. Greg was beside her on her left, on her right Stephen
DiSelleone
, a chain-smoking young
Sicilian whose subjects were music theory and piano. Opposite her Janice
Reaster
, a dark blonde whose figure
was fuller than Pat thought anatomically possible with
out artificial aid, and whose deep brown eyes never once left Stephen's. There were six others, most of them as meek as anyone Pat had known, and just as
liable to slip her a razor as congratulate her on whatever
had been her last achievement. They were Ford Dan
vers' people, but only as long as Danvers occupied the
mountaintop.

Smoke curled to the lighting in the ceiling. Chatter
was quiet now that she had taken her seat, gazes flick
ing from the
wallprints
to the table to her and away. Pat
smiled at them all, nodded when Greg touched her arm in support, and wished suddenly and violently she had
not left her purse in her office. She wanted a cigarette.
She wanted it badly. And more so when Danvers came
into the room and sat in the chair nearest the door.

He was a head shorter than she, slender and thin-
lipped. His hair was gleaming black and slicked close to
his scalp; a handlebar mustache that never quite man
aged the flair. He was given to tailored tweed suits and
silk ties, a waistcoat when the weather was chilly, and
an imperious manner that was never quite gracious. He looked at her and smiled, a shark's smile unconvincing,
and she felt her pulse quicken. His eyes were puffed, and he kept moistening his lips. It was the first sign
she'd had that she might have actually won.

Again the craving for the cigarette, but before she could get one from Stephen, George Constable strode
in, bloated and
tweeded
and smelling of witch hazel. A
bulldog's face, complete with jutting chin and swaying
jowls, and brown eyes so cold they reminded her of the
dead. He said nothing to Danvers, merely nodded at
the greetings murmured his way and took his seat at the
head of the table.

Pat's throat suddenly dried. This was it. A small segment of her dream either created or relegated, and
she wished without warning she didn't have to be here
to hear it.

And it was a wish that reversed itself drastically ninety minutes later. Constable had
insisted,
shortly
after Danvers called the meeting to order, that me de
partment go through its regular monthly affairs before,
as he put it with a smile to Pat, "we break out the news." She had wanted to scream, but she smiled
grimly back. She wanted to kick under the table every
one who spoke, and to strangle Danvers, who obviously
knew the results of the Trustees' deliberations and was determined to drag out the small items as long as possible: scholarships granted and denied for lowerclassmen,
supplies, showings in the building's lobby for Greg's
and Pat's seniors, more supplies, an announcement from
the president about the June graduation, a notice from
Chief Stockton concerning the increase in village van
dalism directly linked to students living on campus.

She wanted to scream.

And astonished
herself
by agreeing when Constable,
at six o'clock, suggested they break for a quick meal in
the Union cafeteria before getting on.

Both Greg and Janice had been ready to dissent, but
were stopped by a frown that left them both visibly
puzzled. She could not explain, however, that she needed
some time to banish the tension that had been spilling
acid into her stomach. And after three years of fighting,
another hour wouldn't make any difference. She wanted
now to be completely ready in case she had to start the
fight again.

She waited, then, until the others had left the room, grinning encouragement at her friends while she traced
meaningless designs in the table's high-polished top.
The drone of voices and the slap of soles faded before
she
rose,
were gone by the time she had reached her
office and had closed the door behind her. She did not turn on the light. Instead, she took her seat behind the
desk and pulled Homer from her handbag. It was night-
dark, chilly, and she felt a curious drowsiness pulling at
her eyes after less than five minutes. But she did not
fight it. She only congratulated herself on not taking the
cigarette, and laid her head on folded forearms, intending to run through a series of conversations she would
have with the Dean should it all go wrong.

An arm of the wind slowly closed the casement window.

The white globes of the campus lights shimmered in
the dark like stars trapped beneath black ice.

Homer, on the desk, almost seemed to glow.

Pat slept.
Lightly.
A portion of her mind listening for
sounds in the hall, her mouth slightly open,
her
eyelids
fluttering.

She slept while Homer watched, and there were images: a storm-roiled bay and a child helpless on a raft; a
demon crimson and brown rising slowly from a steam
ing sea; her parents shaking their heads as she tried to explain through a white silk gag why she was divorcing
the man they claimed to love; a demon crimson and
orange slavering over a woman chained to a block of granite; Greg smiling; George Constable smiling; her
station wagon sailing over the edge of a cliff, Abbey
inside wide-mouthed and screaming; a demon thudding
down a deserted dirt road, taller than the trees, wider
than the valley, yet leaving no footprints and not mak
ing a sound; a classroom, her classroom, filled with
blind and mute students; Greg smiling; Janice smiling;
the demon in all colors smashing up through the floor
boards of her office and reaching
—

She sat up, gasping, slamming the chair back against
the wall. The wind was keening, the panes quivering,
the radiator clanking as it fought against the cold. She pulled at her face to waken her while she scrambled for
her handbag and shoved Homer inside. Then she reached
over and locked the window, shuddered for a moment
as she looked over the slope to the black forest wall.
Down on Chancellor Avenue a streetlamp winked. An
eye, she thought; a white eye watching.

She turned, then, and hurried back to the conference
room, taking her seat just as the dean rapped his knuck
les on the table, sounding the call to order.

Danvers was the only one not in his place.

Constable cleared his throat and tugged at the wattles
stiff below his neck. He sat and opened a file in front of
him, stabbing at a series of papers with a diamond-
ringed finger. He glanced up at the empty chair, at his
watch, at the chair. There was no expression on his face, but Pat sensed a frown.

"I expect Mr. Danvers is . . . shall we say indisposed in the restroom?"

A stifling of dutiful laughter.

"However, due to a meeting in an hour or so I must
attend with the Town
Council,
I think he'll forgive me
if I proceed without him." He smiled, a bulldog's
smile, and touched the diamond finger to the
greying
at
his temple. "I also don't believe it fair that we should
keep Dr. Shavers waiting any longer. She had worked
extraordinarily hard on this project, and I believe I'm
speaking for the Trustees when I say how much we
appreciate all that she's done."

Her hands were clasped on the table, knuckles white, thumbs jumping. As best she could without showing it,
she bit down on the inside of her lower lip, shifted her
feet until her soles were flat on the floor.

Greg shifted in his chair; she did not look at him.

Janice winked at her; she barely managed a ghost of a
smile.

The others were little more than mannequins posi
tioned as background. For all she knew as her gaze
scanned the room, they weren't even breathing.

The wind again, pummeling the outer wall, shaking
the single corner window in its stone frame.

The dean glanced at her then, and she fought to keep
a smile at bay. There was no clue in his posture, none in his bland expression, and she wished to hell he
would either pull the damned trigger or put the damned
gun back in its holster.

"Dr. Shavers."

She started.

Constable pointed at the folder. "I have been instructed to read this to you, and to the others. I trust
you will bear with me and my rather untrained voice."

She could do nothing but nod, nothing but pray she
could restrain herself from strangling him.

"This afternoon the Board of Trustees,
Hawksted
College,
Oxrun
Station, Connecticut, met
in camera,"
Constable read after a flurry of shaking out a
parch
mentlike
sheet of paper, "regarding the proposition
that the Fine Arts Department
—current chairman, Dr.
Ford Danvers—relinquish its administrative authority
over those in the, uh, the arts."

He glanced up suddenly, looking directly at Pat. "I
apologize for the confusion of language, Dr. Shavers,
but I'm afraid even this small-town bureaucracy hasn't
had the time to create a new phrase that also made no
sense."

She blinked, refusing to look at the others even though
they were staring. George Constable never, but never,
attempted an off-the-cuff joke with them.
Never.
It wasn't
done. It wasn't his style. And she could not help but think the attempt was a sign. She paid no attention to the goose flesh suddenly on her arms.

Constable rattled the paper, cleared his throat with a
slight stretching of his neck. "Be that as it may
...
the
Trustees have decided unanimously on the following, to
be announced to the immediately concerned faculty in
private session, to the faculty and student body as a
whole at the earliest possible convenience.

"That the president shall be directed to appoint Dr. Patrice Lauren Shavers to the position of Full Professor
effective immediately. That Dr. Gregory Allan Billings
be appointed to the position of Full Professor effective
immediately. That Janice
Reaster
be
appointed Associ
ate Professor effective immediately."