The Books of Fell (20 page)

“No, you can’t,” I agreed.

“He doesn’t want to be punk anymore … or any of it.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”

“What an interesting thing to say, Fell.”

“It’s from
Camino Real,”
I said. “Tennessee Williams wrote it. We had it in English last term.”

“But you remembered it,” she said. “That’s nice.”

Amazing!” Nina said when she opened the door. “Dad’s stuck at his office, says he’s going across the street to the matinee until the snow stops … and Mrs. Whipple’s son called to say the roads aren’t negotiable.”

“They aren’t,” I said. “What kept me going was the thought of your jar of Fox’s U-Bet.”

“I thought you were going to say me.”

“Don’t make me choose between you and an egg cream,” I said.

• • •

While I took my boots off, Nina took my wet coat and put it on a hanger. Then she hung it on the back of the closet door and put a newspaper under it on the floor.

“If it was anything besides an egg cream, would I have a chance?” she asked me.

I looked up at her while I struggled with my left boot. She had on a black mock-turtle top, black pants, yellow socks, and black lace-up running shoes. Her yellow hair seemed just washed and still damp, no makeup. She was looking better and better to me.

“I’m still mad at you, Nina,” I lied.

“Don’t be, Fell. I’m a new person.”

I made us some egg creams, and we sat in the living room talking. The snow clung to the tree branches winter-wonderland style, while she told me about the new person.

First, the new person was never going to say or think the name Eddie Dragon ever again.

Second, the new person was going to end her analysis.

Third, the new person was going to start shopping for a whole new wardrobe.

“Go back to two,” I said. “What does your dad think about that?”

“He’s been telling me I ought to take a rest from her. It costs him one hundred and twenty dollars a week. Just imagine all the Easter clothes I can buy! I want to start thinking about outside me for a change. I’m tired of inside me.”

“Doesn’t Dr. Lasher have a say in that?”

“She’ll probably be glad, too. She used to complain that I used up her answering machine tapes with all my messages. I’d call and talk as long as I could to her machine, and then I’d just call again and talk, call again and talk … She’d say, Nina, vy can’t you vait until de session for all dat?”

The new person was playing Tiffany softly in the background wearing the old person’s White Shoulders. I was letting my head rest from thoughts of Lauren and Creery, the letters — all of it — while I watched the snow and her green eyes … and thought of Mom as Nina told me how long it had been since she’d gone to the mall.

“Why are you smiling?” she said. “That’s part of being a female, caring what you wear, how you look.”

“I know it is. But when I’m home, I live with a shopping junkie.”

“Who? Your mother or your sister?”

“My sister’s only five. It’s my mother. My father’d say instead of a gun moll, she was a mall moll.”

“What was he like, Fell?”

A personal question from Nina Deem.

I started talking the way someone from Maine basks in the warm sun of July, fearful that it won’t last long, that a cold snap is right around the corner.

I think it was close to five o’clock when I was explaining how they “decop” a police officer before he becomes a narc. “Even the posture has to change,” I was saying, “because a cop walks with one arm swinging. And another giveaway is not haggling over the price. If the doper says a quarter ounce of pot is fifty, the narc has to talk him down to forty, forty-five. Cops make the mistake of buying anything at any price.”

The phone put a stop to my sudden diarrhea of the mouth.

Nina came back from the hall all smiles.

“Dad’s met a friend and they’re going down the street for dinner. I guess you’ll have to cook me mine, Fell. The new person can’t think of anything interesting to do with a pair of chicken breasts.”

“Where’s Meatloaf today?”

“In Dad’s office. He has a bed there, and his toys. He has office toys, home toys, and car toys … What happened to Tiffany?”

“My lecture on narcs happened to her,” I said. “Do you have any Progresso bread crumbs?”

“You’re a brand-name freak, Fell. Do you need them for the chicken?”

“And some Dijon mustard,” I said. “They’re
my
toys.”

• • •

She sat on the stool in the kitchen while I slathered the chicken breasts with Dijon, dipped them in Italian Style Wonder bread crumbs, (not ideal, but okay in a pinch), and dotted them with butter.

“We put them in at four hundred for forty-five minutes,” I said.

“That’s all there is to it?”

“Wait till you taste them!”

• • •

While we waited, she said she had something to show me.

“It took me a long time to hunt this down,” she said, “but the new me is determined to hear you, even if I’m a day late.”

She handed me a thin white leather book with T
HE
C
OTTERSVILLE
C
LARION
written in gold across the front.

“Rinaldo’s at the end, in the V’s.”

I found him immediately. You couldn’t miss him. He had the same big, toothy smile, and a certain cock-of-the-walk expression maybe inspired by having good buns and hips that could do things
blancos’
couldn’t.

Our Rinaldo on his own turf. He didn’t look like somebody you’d send back to the kitchen for a clean fork.

At the bottom of the page there was one of those quotes you found in yearbooks, supposed to sum up someone’s personality.

In addition to the formal portrait there was a snapshot of each graduate. Rinaldo’s featured him in a magician’s cape, pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

The camera angle was bad. Rinaldo was all hands.

I remembered those hands reaching in somewhere else … to pull out mail. The blue
CORRESPONDENCE
box in Deem Library.

I thought of my conversation hours ago with Lauren:
We wrote each other more than we saw each other.
And, of course, I thought of the letter Creery had written to his stepbrother.

What would it have been worth to Lasher to have his own hands on Creery’s mail? A pen? A watch? A VCR? Lasher had always believed Creery was involved with drugs and dealing on The Hill.

I handed the book back to Nina.

“There’s one other thing about him under Class Prophecy,” she said. “They did it in rhyme that year. Here it is.”

She read it to me.

I wasn’t great company at dinner. As soon as the snow stopped, I got ready to hike back.

“Fell,” Nina said as she walked me to the door, “when I go to The Charles Dance with you, can I stay in Sevens House overnight like the girls from Miss Tyler’s?”

“Your dad won’t agree to that.”

“Yes, he will.
He
told
me
about it, that they clear a whole floor, and it’s the only night girls stay there.”

“You’d be stuck in with a lot of other girls, three and four to a room.”

“That’s what I want, Fell. I want to be like everyone else. I want to have someone say about me what they said about Rinaldo. I want to rule myself.”

“If your dad agrees, it’s fine with me.”

We kissed good-night right before I left.

I wished we hadn’t. Either my mind was too much on Rinaldo or my memories were always going to spoil the present. I didn’t feel the way I had a summer ago on a beach on Long Island after kissing Delia. I felt more like a preppy on a first date.

• • •

I was definitely down by the time I’d climbed my way through unplowed streets up to The Hill.

I wasn’t in the mood for Mrs. Violet and her groupies clustered in the reception room, along with Sevens members and their dates.

It was only around nine o’clock, too early for everyone to be milling around, but I supposed the snow had kept them all from movies and coffeehouses and places they went on Saturday nights.

I knew I should have stopped by the dorm, that by now Dib would be steamed because I hadn’t reported back to him anything that had happened on Playwicky Road.

I also knew I’d earned a Sevens fine of seven dollars for not calling The Tower to say I was skipping dinner.

I tried to make it to the stairs without answering to anyone, when I suddenly saw the familiar blue uniforms.

There were two of them. There are always two.

Then I saw Dr. Skinner, the snow still melting down his bald head, standing in front of the front-hall bulletin board where there seemed to be a space cleared just for him. He had on his mackinaw with a wet scarf, overshoes, standing arms akimbo, reading a sheet of paper thumbtacked there.

There was a semicircle of kids watching him, whispering together.

After he stepped away and walked over toward the policemen, I took his place.

The mystery of the missing letter was solved. There was the copy, for anyone to read.

Scribbled across the bottom in fresh ink were the words
Self-explanatory … Lasher paid for what he found out. Now it’s my turn. You’ll never see
me
again, either. CC

And we didn’t. Not alive, anyway.

His body was found in a snowdrift at the bottom of The Tower. His frozen neck was broken from the fall.

I
am a Sevens. Sevens is part of me as twilight is part of the day, connected and vital to me as the heart to the bloodstream, always and forever.

I am a Sevens, brother to any Sevens, there for him as the sun and moon are for the tides, always and forever.

“Be seated,” said Lionel Schwartz after we recited the oath.

We were in the Sevens House reception room, summoned there through the intercom.

Everyone on The Hill that Sunday morning was dorm or house campused until chapel at eleven.

“At this very moment Dr. Skinner is telling the dorm boys most of what I am going to tell you,” Schwartz began, “except for this preamble.

“Before I begin, I call on Fisher to swear us.”

Ozzie Fisher stood up. He was the only black Seven that year. A senior, an ardent political activist when I arrived on The Hill as a junior, he had named his tree for a black hero of South Africa, Mandela.

Some of us were still in our bathrobes. I was. Ozzie was. He stood in front of his chair and waited until The Lion said, “Sevens.”

“Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones, Gloria Naylor, Counte Cullen.”

“Seven black writers, so be it,” Schwartz said.

Normally, Schwartz would have given him an argument. The rule of this Sevens ritual was to name seven things that went together, not seven that were alike, but this was not normally, not the occasion to rev up Ozzie’s motor. He knew it, and sat down with a glimmer of triumph in his dark eyes.

“This is for Sevens ears only,” said Schwartz. “Late Friday evening Cyril Creery came to me and told me he was ready for Twilight Truth, but he hoped meanwhile word would get out that what he had to confess was an accident, and not a deliberate action. As a brother, he would not place me in conflict or jeopardy by giving me information I would be honor bound by Sevens to withhold from the authorities, at the same time legally bound to report to them.” Schwartz’s voice thundered suddenly: “WHY do you think he felt obliged to say that?”

Silence.

“Because,” said Schwartz, “of The Sevens Revenge! He was terrified that we would get to him before he got to us!”

Schwartz peered around the room at all of us through his John Lennon glasses.

“I believe it caused his suicide! … I believe he hoped I could prevent this alleged revenge … then feared that no one could. The legend of The Sevens Revenge is too overpowering! It overwhelms reason and in the long run it overwhelms justice! That is what it did to Cyril Creery.

“You may say he had no right to be a Sevens, because of his apparent admission that his father told him of the significance of the tree-naming ceremony. BUT … he did have a right to Twilight Truth, to speak his piece … and where his conflict with Lasher at the top of The Tower is concerned, Cyril Creery had a right to a trial!

“We cannot be anything but ashamed, this morning, that the ugly gossip of The Sevens Revenge forced him to kill himself.

“For once and for all, then, I tell you in this preamble, there is no such thing as The Sevens Revenge! It is a fantasy, a myth, a very dangerous one. Any Sevens who perpetuates it is ultimately destroying Sevens. Remember that.”

Then The Lion told us what every boy on The Hill would hear that morning.

1. There would be no memorial service for Cyril Creery. Dr. Skinner opted to deny him such an honor due to his part in Lasher’s death.

2. No one on The Hill was to talk with reporters.

3. The police would be investigating. Anyone approached by them was to tell the truth. Sevens would not be expected to explain the Sevens selection process to them, since it was not pertinent to an investigation.

4. The Grief Counselor would be back on campus Monday for individual and group consultation.

5. Everyone on The Hill was to bear in mind that the Gardner Board of Trustees would meet after Easter vacation to vote on the proposal for Gardner to go coed, an idea the student body was resisting. The sooner Gardner was back to normal, the better the chances for Gardner to remain as it was and had been for 123 years.

6. The Charles Dance, a tradition at Gardner for 101 of those years, would take place as scheduled next Saturday evening.

• • •

Schwartz took off his spectacles and wiped them clean as he concluded. “This morning, of all mornings, every Sevens member should be present in chapel…. We are Sevens …”

“Always and forever” came our answer.

• • •

The phone call from Lauren Lasher was announced over my intercom just as I had finished knotting my tie.

I put on my suit jacket and went down to the phone booth at the end of the hall, pushing the button that signaled I had picked up.

“Have you sent Paul’s writings to my father, Fell?” She started right in, without a hello or any other comment.

“No. We only talked about that yesterday.”

“Good! Don’t! Daddy doesn’t want it mixed in with his other mail. Hang on to it all.”

“Lauren, how are you feeling?” I wasn’t even sure she knew about Creery’s suicide, or the letter he’d posted.

But she knew.

“I’m feeling the same way my family feels,” she said. “Very litigious.”

“Very
what?”

“We’re going to sue, Fell. That’s why I’m calling.”

“Are
you
all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right! Someone murders my brother, then tells the world he’s screwing me because he hated Paul so much — migawd!”

“It wasn’t put exactly that way.”

“It’s close enough. I read it, Fell.”

“Who did you that big favor?”

“It might not sound like a favor, but it was. I have to know, since all of you do. Lowell wasn’t in any shape to tell me. He could barely get out the words ‘Cyr’s dead.’ Lionel drove over here last night, and we talked way past lock-in. Miss Tyler’s allowed a man downstairs after one
A.M
. for the first time in its history, I guess…. I’m a mess, so don’t smart mouth me, Fell.”

“I had no intentions of — ”

She cut me off. She wasn’t in any mood for small talk.

“We figured out Cyr probably found a way to let Paul know about us, since that was his main interest: getting even with Paul.”

“And how did your brother get Cyr’s letter?”

“The way Cyr suspected, probably: went into his room, found the copy.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Fell? Do me a favor, hmmm? Stop being boy detective. I don’t care, at this point, how Paul got the letter. I don’t care about any of the little cow pies you might come upon. It’s enough for me to know about the cow. Do you get my meaning?”

“Yes. I’ll cork it.”

“Thanks…. I’m going to The Charles Dance with Schwartz.”

“How come?”

“He said Paul would have wanted Sevens to give me support. He said the sooner I faced people, the better it would be for me.”

“Well, that’s probably true, Lauren.”

“Or maybe he just suspects my family will hold Gardner
and
Sevens liable for Paul’s murder … Maybe he’s trying to soften me up.”

“No. It sounds like something Schwartz would think to do. He’s very conscientious and thoughtful.”

“I don’t trust anyone at this point.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Stop being so agreeable! I hate all of you right now!”

“Okay.”

“Maybe not you. Sorry, Fell…. Something else. I hope you saved the microwafer with Paul’s letter to Schwartz on it.”

“Yeah.”

“Naturally Schwartz claims he never got the letters, didn’t know anything about them, doubts Paul put them in his box. We need Paul’s as evidence.”

“Evidence for what, Lauren?”

“It proves Cyr really had reason to kill Paul, and that Sevens knew he did … or Schwartz knew it, anyway.”

“Maybe your brother never printed it out. He’d been stalling since Christmas.”

“You don’t believe that, and neither do I!”

“Why would Schwartz lie?”

“Because he’s protecting Sevens, Fell! He puts Sevens before any other consideration! He was probably conferring with other Sevens to try and decide what to do, how to handle it! … Daddy says that little delay is going to cost them!”

Where had the simple life gone? Days I’d only have to worry about Keats playing around behind my back, my mother loose with her credit card in some shopping center, Delia’s soft smile lying lovingly into my naive eyes, small, everyday occurrences in the life of a growing boy? Not homicide, suicide, and now litigiousness in preppydom.

I could hear the chapel bells tolling.

“Lauren? I have to go now, but before I do — I’m sorry all this had to happen.”

“Some of it didn’t
have
to happen. Cyr didn’t have to put that letter up on the bulletin board for the whole world to see! Damn him! If he wasn’t dead, I’d — ”

I could hear the sob.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, Lauren.”

“We’re still going to do the memorial book, grim as Paul’s writings were. Mother thinks it’s like Jungian synchronicity, that he probably had a premonition of his early death…. We’ll talk at The Charles Dance, Fell. You’ll have time, won’t you?”

“I’ll make time.”

“Because we want to go ahead as soon as possible. Paul would have wanted vindication. Nobody at that school cared but you and that Dibble kid! You and he and Daddy were the only ones who gave Paul the benefit of the doubt!”

“There’re still some unanswered questions,” I said.

“FELL?” she said threateningly.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

But after chapel
I did
take care of one last loose end.

• • •

First, I tried to get Dib inside and make a date to talk. I hurried out of chapel after him. He waved me away and jumped into the old Mustang with Little Jack at the wheel. It was parked just a few cars behind Dr. Skinner’s long, black limousine.

I walked down to The Tower by myself then, the cold winter sun warming me. I couldn’t help think of Creery, seeing his face in my memory ways I’d never viewed it before. Sad ways of seeing the vacant eyes and silly punk paraphernalia. Alive, he’d angered me, reminding me of an old self maybe still around somewhere inside me … but dead, no longer any kind of threat to me, he made me think only of the waste, and how he wrote his stepbrother:
I think I can kick this thing.
… I thought of the dumb idea he had that he could be clean in just a week … and the stupid bravado bragging about having Lauren, getting laid … all the very personal things a guy could write,
I
could have written, never thinking it would get into someone’s hands it wasn’t meant for.

Rinaldo was in the kitchen, and the smell of rib roast wafted from inside as I called through the door.

While I waited for him in the empty library, I thought of the fear of The Sevens Revenge that Schwartz had spoken about that morning.

Maybe Lasher had delayed giving Schwartz those letters purposely, to feed that fear in Creery. Maybe Lasher had known The Revenge was fictitious but counted on the idea Creery would be left to wait for Sevens to act…. and the longer the wait, the worse the imagining of what would be done to him.

I could still picture Creery with the little rat tail behind his head, running around in his long gabardine coat and his Timberland boots.

Death brought it all back and colored it in softer hues, so even Creery seemed more human dead, and I felt differently about him. Sorry or something. But I felt for him, and it surprised me.

So did Rinaldo surprise me, coming up suddenly behind me, his hand over my eyes.

“Guess who?”

I took a chance while he was grinning down at me. “Lasher left something in the word processor about how he got Creery’s letter to his stepbrother.”

Rinaldo pulled out a chair. “Can I sit?”

I shook my head.

“And how he found out about Creery and Lauren.”

“What do you want, Fell?” He wasn’t grinning any longer.

“You took the mail from the
CORRESPONDENCE
box every night,” I said. “One of Creery’s letters for a watch? That was a fair price.”

“Now you’re going to try and do blackmail, Fell?”

“No blackmail…. Another letter, a pen. Right, Rinaldo?”

“I don’t play the twilight game. That’s for you guys.”

“Just tell me about the mail game. I promise you it’s just for my information.”

“I gave him nothing, and if he wrote I did, he’s lying.”

“But he got into the mail.”

“I turned my back and he got into the mail. He was looking for a way to connect Creery with dope, and he found a different connection. The sister. That ate at him until just before Christmas. Then the letter to the stepbrother was like butter on a burn. I knew from his reaction he’d struck gold. But I never saw any one of the letters, not one. He copied them on the Xerox machine over there. I never touched a letter, never handed one to him…. He showed up the last thing at night when I came here to unlock the box. I turned my back.”

“And accepted payment.”

“No money.”

“I’m not saying you took money.”

“I made an error in judgment, yes I did. He knew my weakness: nice things I could never afford. I learned to like those things from Sevens. Everything but your taste in clothes. I live surrounded by the good life.”

“How many Sevens have Gstaad watches and apartments in town?”

“You know what I mean, Fell. You all live like you have them. I am part of Sevens, and I’m not. I have my steak on Wednesday nights, but I eat it in the kitchen on a stool. You get a chance to eat at the table for once, you take it.”

We could hear other Sevens arriving at The Tower for Sunday lunch.

“I know Creery suspected me, too. Maybe he didn’t know I let Lasher see the mail, but he believed Lasher told me things that Lasher never would. So-o-o — ” He turned up his palms. “I was afraid too, for a while. I thought always that Creery killed him. We were the only ones here that day. I was sure of that…. Can you erase this thing in that machine?”

“There isn’t anything about It in there. It was just my hunch, Rinaldo.”