The Body in the Bonfire (15 page)

“Both of them seem to be overreacting a little,” Faith said.

“I'd say a lot,” Marian corrected her. “And there will be more to come. One of the blessings of age is that you begin not to be so concerned with what other people think of you.”

Faith was a bit taken aback at this. What was Marian talking about? She couldn't keep herself from asking, “Even your husband?”

“Even your husband,” Marian replied firmly. “Now, you can tell them everything's fine and you're going to come down and have lunch with me soon. That should hold them, and I want you to see my new furniture.”

 

What was it that was so seductive, so mesmerizing about fire? The sight of the gigantic crackling bonfire, jagged tongues of flame shooting straight toward the heavens, was so overpowering that Faith stopped dead at the end of the path. The scene before her was mythic. Boys were darting to the side for more fuel for the fire, dark figures suddenly illuminated as they threw branches and other pieces of wood onto the blaze. Boys were sitting on logs, drinking not mead but cocoa from mugs. Boys were singing campfire songs—“Red River Valley” and “Freight Train”—a harmony of voices that had changed and voices that hadn't.

“Holy smoke,” a man behind her blurted out. The people around him all laughed. He was talking to a boy next to him, presumably his son, a Mansfield student. “When you said a bonfire, I figured the kind we make at the beach to roast hot dogs and toast marshmallows. Not the Towering Inferno. They must have had to use a cherry picker to build it. Any marshmallow you put near this would incinerate a few feet away!”

It was true. And the staff was keeping everyone at a safe distance.

Faith walked on, feeling the warmth of the blaze. Showers of sparks fell like shooting stars onto the icy surface of the lake. She was alone. Tom had not even pretended to want to come with her and miss the game. Ben was torn. Why did there have to be two things he wanted to do?
In the end, his parents decided for him. Faith had promised to take him next year. She was relieved at the outcome. Having Ben along would have cramped her style. She couldn't very well drag him behind her while she searched the students' rooms.

Connie Reed was coming toward her. “Welcome, welcome, Faith! Get something to eat, drink, and pull up a log. Are you on your own?”

“I'm afraid the Super Bowl won out. A tough choice.”

“I quite understand—just look at all the transistor radios. But this is the night we've always had the bonfire, so neither Ravens nor Giants can stand in our way.” She'd made a joke, seemed a little surprised, and chuckled.

Faith got a steaming mug of cocoa and sat down on one of the logs, next to the family that had been behind her on the path. The father was reminiscing, speaking almost reverently as he gazed into the flames.

“I remember watching the Vendome fire,” he said. “It must have been around '72 or '73. I was at B.U. A bunch of us heard about it and went down Comm. Ave. to watch. The Vendome was empty. It wasn't a hotel anymore. They were converting it into condos. We all thought it was terrific. Watching something burn like crazy when you knew nobody could get hurt.” He paused. “We didn't find out about the nine firemen who died until the next day.” Seeing an anxious look
on the face of the little girl beside him, he added, “But I love bonfires. Nice, safe bonfires like this one, where we can look all we want. Now, that flame right in front of us reminds me exactly of one of Harry Potter's dragons. See the shape? What do you think, Katie?” The dad swung his child onto his lap.

“It does! And at the bottom of the fire, it looks kind of like a face. And the whole thing looks like little cities. Skyscrapers. And there's another face.” The Vendome tragedy was totally forgotten.

For the moment, Faith allowed herself to feel content. It was a beautiful night. She was with people who seemed happy simply to be together. The singing stopped and for a while there was nothing but the sound of the boys' voices, with an occasional touchdown reported or a shout as a piece of fuel ignited, intensifying the flames. Orange, many reds, yellow, a flash of white, a flash of blue—Faith tried to sort out the colors. The air smelled wonderfully of smoke, pine-scented smoke from the fir boughs the boys had gathered. As the branches burned, the fire raced into each needle, creating a blackened skeleton before it disintegrated. The corrugated cardboard from the cartons they were throwing on turned into fans of fine ash like the pleats of a Fortuny gown.

Then suddenly there was a voice—a full-throated alto. A woman's voice, mournful and tender. Everyone stopped talking to listen to the
song. Zoë's sad Russian song. It was followed by another and another. One of the music teachers accompanied her on the guitar. It was magical. She was magical, standing in front of the fire, swaying slightly from side to side, her hair long and loose.

Then it was over; she moved away.

“‘Love is a spirit all compact of fire, / Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.' Will must have been staring into the hearth.” It was Winston Freer. He'd added a jaunty tartan tam-o'-shanter to his Tyrolean greatcoat, and the effect was more that of a lawn figurine than an international man of fashion. The fire had deepened the pink of his rosy cheeks and static from his cap had caused wisps of his white hair to cling to the wool.

“Which play is the line from?” Faith asked. “It's beautiful.”

“Not one of the plays.
Venus and Adonis.
Like many modern mystery scribblers and the like, who long to be remembered for the literary novel they've managed to get published, Shakespeare apparently valued the poems above the plays, his bread and butter. Of course,
Venus and Adonis
was well regarded by the Elizabethans. The age-old tale of an older woman seducing a handsome younger man.”

Faith was sure it was not her imagination that a decidedly lascivious note had crept into Freer's discourse on the Bard.

“Speaking of which, I must go and congratulate Zoë on her performance. The songs, I mean.”

He really was very, very wicked. Faith couldn't help smiling as he made his way closer to the headmaster's wife.

Faith knew she should go to Carleton House—she didn't know how long the students would stay here by the fire, by the lake—yet the scene held her. She didn't want to leave. She saw some of the kids in her class, Daryl included. Robert Harcourt was throwing a crate into the fire. He seemed as enthusiastic as the students. Spying her, he raised a hand in greeting. She walked over toward him to thank him, although it had been Ms. Reed who had issued the invitation. He was busy with another crate and she didn't want to bother him—or get quite that close to the bonfire. The heat baked her face, her eyes smarted, and she stepped back into the shadows, joining the group gathered there. The darkness, intensified in contrast to the blaze, blanketed them. She could hear the boys behind her talking, and all at once she became very, very interested.

“What an asshole. I mean, he's a senior. He's only got a semester to go. Why would he want to screw everything up? And you
know
Harcourt will tell the colleges he's applied to.”

“Yeah. But don't be so sure. He's one of those guys who can get out of anything. I'm sure that's what he's thinking right now. Right now, wher
ever he is, getting laid and stoned is my bet—probably in front of a TV. I wish.”

They laughed.

“I mean, it was a total accident that his parents showed up to take him out for lunch. No one would ever have known he wasn't here, since it's Project Term.”

“He's going to kill them. 'Rents. They do the stupidest things. I'm glad my old man and old lady are divorced. They never come to see me. We have a ‘You go your way, I'll go mine' thing going, which is fine.”

He spoke with bravado, but Faith wasn't convinced.

“Anyway, Sloane's going to be in a shitload of trouble, but it's only January, and he'll have landed on his feet by graduation. Bet?”

“You're on. Say fifty?”

“Fifty sounds good.”

They moved off out of earshot, but Faith had heard enough.

Sloane Buxton: AWOL.

“What's all this about Sloane being missing from campus?” Faith asked, sidling up to Daryl.

“Yeah. His parents came to see him today and the boy could not be located. Harcourt started checking, and no one has laid eyes on him since Friday. He wasn't in class Saturday morning, but I figured he was sleeping in and his friends didn't say anything. Mrs. Mallory didn't take attendance. By the way, we all like you better, but the cookies were fly.”

“I saw Sloane late Friday afternoon. He knew I wouldn't be teaching the class and that Mrs. Mallory would.”

“There you go. Unless you passed your class list on to her, she wouldn't even know he was supposed to be there. You didn't give her your list, right?”

“You know I didn't. I forgot, plus I think the less she sees of me, the better for both of us.”

“You and the rest of the world. But the woman can cook. Anyway, Sloane's bed hasn't been slept in, so he must have split Friday night or early Saturday before anybody else was up. Harcourt is bullshit.”

“Does this happen a lot? Kids taking off?”

“Not really. It isn't that easy to get anywhere from here unless you have a car. Someone, probably one of his girlfriends, must have picked Sloane up. He is very popular with the ladies. He also probably planned to slip back tonight at the bonfire. One of his buddies has been by the path since we got here to head him off. They must have put a note in his room, too.”

“Will he get expelled?”

“No such luck. Think of the stink his parents would make, especially this close to graduation. The last thing the school ever wants is angry parents shooting their mouths off, even if their sainted son is in the wrong. I told you about the senior caught smoking dope, and look at that school in western Mass. where that kid—actually he was no kid; he was twenty—carved some antigay thing into another kid's back and got off with a suspended sentence and probation. He'd slashed somebody a week earlier, but that kid didn't tell his parents. It's a question of which parents apply the most pressure on the school.”

Faith shuddered. Then she brightened. “Maybe this incident, paired with what Sloane's been
doing to you, will convince the headmaster to take a tough stand.”

“But we don't have any real evidence yet. He'll deny it and his parents will back him up. Harcourt will do what we thought he'd do in the beginning—have a couple of chapels on diversity—and we're nowhere.”

Diversity.
The word reminded Faith of Sloane's use of it. Daryl didn't need any more fuel for his fire, though.

“We're not nowhere; we're sure it's Sloane,” Faith protested.

“Yeah—and who else?”

The boy was right. Hate feeds on hate, and it seemed likely that more than one Aryan Nation type was involved in this persecution. “I'm going to say good-bye to Dr. Harcourt and case out a few rooms at Carleton House before I leave.” Paired with the first part of her sentence, it made for a weird “To Do” list.

Daryl frowned. “I can't leave yet; otherwise, I'd go with you. I'm in the chorus, and we sing a few songs at the end. Be careful—or wait until tomorrow morning. Right now, there's no one on campus to speak of. The security guys are all here to keep us from ending up as toast.”

“Then this is the perfect time.”

“For a lot of things—think about it.”

Faith did as she walked over to Robert Harcourt, who was now sitting down next to his wife, savoring his cocoa as if it were a rare elixir. Zoë
had just poured something from a silver flask into her mug, but then, Zoë wasn't the cocoa type. An empty campus. An empty house. But the Harcourts' alarm system would be on—as it hadn't been before. What else was vulnerable? Or who?

“This was wonderful,” she said enthusiastically, sweeping her arm back toward the conflagration. “I hope I can come back next year and bring my family.”

“By all means,” Robert said expansively, leaping to his feet like the gentleman he was. “I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's always a special night at Mansfield, one of the old traditions we've continued.”

“We love traditions here. The older the better,” Zoë said. Whatever she was drinking had blurred her words slightly. She didn't get up.

“And the music, particularly your songs, was perfect. This is the kind of night I'm sure we'll all remember for the rest of our lives.”

Zoë nodded in acknowledgment. “A few ballads from my homeland.”

“And I hear the class is going well. I should be taking it myself.” Robert gave one of those hearty ha-has that Faith associated with retired British officers who'd served in “Inja, don't you know.”

It was a shame to take some of the bloom off, yet she felt she had to tell him what she knew about Sloane. And yes, she wanted to know just how deep the shit was that Master Buxton was in—ankle-, knee-, or shoulder-high?

“I overheard some of the students mention that
Sloane Buxton, who's in my class, is off campus without permission. I thought I should let you know that I saw him late Friday afternoon. Or rather, early evening. It must have been around five-thirty.”

And what was she doing back at Mansfield at that time? The question was unspoken but clear. Harcourt's attention was diverted from the fire and Zoë stood up.

Quickly, Faith added, “Mrs. Mallory took the class for me yesterday. I like to be with my family on weekends and understood from Ms. Reed that it would be all right to have your cook substitute. I didn't have time after the Friday class to leave some things for her; then I had to wait for my husband to come home to watch the children.”

“The children, of course,” Zoë purred. Millicent or someone else had said the Harcourts were childless. Out of choice? Maybe the Mansfield boys were enough, or maybe Zoë didn't relish morning sickness—or stretch marks.

“This is very interesting.” Robert was all business. “Where did you see him? Was he behaving in an odd manner?”

He always behaved in an odd manner, but Faith couldn't very well describe her antipathy toward the boy without revealing his attacks on Daryl. But why the question? Was Harcourt already framing a defense for letting the boy stay on after breaking a major school rule? Poor Sloane was upset, depressed, acting irrationally?

“I was walking toward the main parking lot, where I'd left my car. It was cold and windy. We both had our heads down and bumped into each other. There was nothing unusual in his behavior. We picked our things up, spoke briefly about the class. I mentioned Mrs. Mallory would be doing some baking with them the next day and we went our separate ways. He seemed to be heading back to his dorm.”

Harcourt nodded. “Thank you for passing the information along. It doesn't look good, I'm afraid. He may have thought his absence would go unnoticed with a substitute, and things are a little more relaxed during this term. Frankly, I'm surprised he hasn't turned up here, mixing with the crowd.”

Obviously, the headmaster hadn't noticed the lookouts and realized Sloane would be warned by his friends. Maybe the plan was to appear at Harcourt's door, hat in hand, abjectly apologetic after the bonfire, when the headmaster was still basking in the afterglow. That's what Faith would have done.

With the chorus of “Men of Harlech” ringing in her ears and the crackling flames growing dimmer, she walked back toward the main campus. It was dark and the total absence of any human beings
was
scary. For a moment, she was tempted to take Daryl's advice and wait until morning, but she shook off the thought and hurried to Carleton House. It rose out of the darkness, only the porch light on, looking not so much a ghostly galleon as
a ghostly tea cozy. She went up the front stairs and walked in. A dark figure rushed toward her. She opened her mouth to scream and a gloved hand forced the sound back into her throat. She tried to break free and kicking wildly, sent them both tumbling to the ground.

“Shut up! Shut up!” her attacker whispered fiercely. It was a boy, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw who the boy was: Zach Cohen. The boy whose room she'd searched. The boy who kept a knife under his pillow.

“You scared the shit out of me—pardon my language.” He took his hand away and sat up. “I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you. I mean, of course I didn't know it was you. I didn't know who it was. Everybody's down at the lake. I wasn't thinking. I just didn't want you to yell. I'm really sorry.” He seemed dazed.

Faith was feeling pretty dazed herself. She stood up to turn on the light, then thought better of it and sat down again. In truth, her legs were a little wobbly.

“What are you doing here?” she asked before he could.

He was dressed completely in black, a watch cap pulled down over his ears, gloves, and a long black trench coat—the Peterman Company kind. Every parent's nightmare come to life since the tragedy at Columbine.

“The bonfire isn't really my thing. All that rahrah stuff. I decided to stay in the dorm.”

“But this isn't your dorm.”

He looked at Faith sharply. “You're right—it isn't. But a kid who lives here had something for me and I thought this would be a good time to get it, since I didn't have anything better to do.”

She realized he was carrying a laptop case.

“It's mine. I'm not into ripping things off from people,” he said quickly.

This made sense. He didn't need to steal, given what he had in his room from buying, selling, and trading.

Then he asked, “Are you going to report me?” He sounded like a very little boy for a moment.

“Is the bonfire required? Are you breaking a rule by not being there?”

“I never heard that we had to go. It's not in the rule book anyway.”

It was no doubt beyond the headmaster's ken that any Mansfield boy would not want to be there, so a rule wasn't necessary.

“Then I'm not sure what I'd be reporting you for,” Faith reasoned. “I'd like to see you in brighter colors, but the fashion police aren't around tonight. I'm also taking you at your word—that the computer is yours.”

It looked exactly like the laptop case Sloane had been carrying Friday, but to the untutored eye—and Faith's definitely was—one carrying case looked very much like another.

Zach visibly relaxed.

“Jeez. You are not like any adults I've ever known. Thanks a lot, and believe me, I won't forget this.”

While he was in the mood, Faith thought she might try to get a little information—about the boy himself and what he might have picked up about what had been happening with Daryl.

“Where do you live? Are you from Massachusetts?”

He appeared to find it a reasonable question—or maybe it was that anything would appear so after the events of the last five minutes.

“I've lived in a bunch of places. My parents like to travel. I've been in boarding schools pretty much since I was nine. Right now, my mother lives in France and my dad is in New York. They got divorced last summer and the joint-custody thing is mostly who can stick me with the other one. I don't care really. It's pretty much always been like this. They can't help the way they are. They never should have had a kid—and I guess I've heard that often enough.” He gave a little laugh, which sounded a whole lot like a sob, and Faith found herself close to tears—the sad and mad kind.

So this was what had caused the metamorphosis. One mystery was cleared up. If Zach was unwanted, he was going to behave and look as unwanted as possible.

“What do you think of Sloane Buxton and his friends? You were there on Friday in class. What was really going on?”

“I try not to have a lot to do with them. They're users—and bullies. Last fall, it was pretty bad, but they've moved on to other people. That's what usually happens. This type of guy has a short attention span.” He appeared happy to discuss his tormentors. “Friday, they were yanking Daryl's chain. They are such morons. He's cool, and I've never seen him react before, but there was something in his notebook—I didn't see it—and he just exploded.”

Faith nodded.

“And what was going on later when I came back? When you were with those ninth graders at the computer?” But Zach had had enough of show-and-tell. He stood up and his face shut down. “We were just playing some dumb games. Nothing special. I have to go now. I don't want to run into anyone else. See you in class,” and he was out the door.

Faith figured Sloane's buddies would have rooms on the floor below his, and she figured correctly. But James Elliot's and Sinclair Smith's rooms were totally different from their friend's. A quick search revealed both were of the “shove dirty clothes on the closet floor and leave as much athletic equipment, including jockstraps, strewn around as possible” school. Neither boy had anything except textbooks in his bookcase, although both had yearbooks for each year—Daryl's pictures all intact. Sinclair had a stack of
Playboy
s in his desk drawer. James went in for
Hustler.
Sound systems, stacks of CDs, and computers loaded with games—very nasty games, James's taste leaning slightly more toward dismemberment than Sinclair's—completed the picture. The only thing of any possible importance was that James had a Hotmail account. She didn't know enough to figure out what name he was using. The icon had his own name, but he could make another one up, open an account, and close it in rapid order. Make it up with the name “Cyberite,” for example.

She was beginning to feel as if she could write one of those little books stacked next to bookstore registers like candy in the supermarket,
What I Learned About Life in the Teen Lane from Searching Their Rooms.
Or she could start her own Web site with a virtual tour of dorm rooms: “And here we have what was probably an apple core but now resembles a desiccated body part, speaking of which, don't forget to peek at the vast array of condoms under Sinclair's underwear.” These rooms lacked Sloane's domestic touches, the boys having settled for school-issued interior decorating, save for an easy chair, apparently necessary for serious studying, or at least for serious magazine reading. Sinclair had a picture of a large sailboat, himself at the helm, and judging from the strong resemblance, it was his family that was beaming encouragement his way.