“You mind if I ask a favor?” said LeBrun, growing serious. “Can I look at that scar on your wrist? I caught a glimpse the other day but I couldn’t see it very well. I don’t mean to be rude.”

There was something so childlike about the request that it didn’t occur to Hawthorne to take offense. He took off his sport coat and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt.

LeBrun leaned over the scar. “That’s a beaut. How far up does it go?”

“To the elbow.”

LeBrun reached out and touched the skin. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. The skin’s a little tender in places.”

“It must have been some fire.” LeBrun gently turned the wrist to see the scar from all sides.

“It was.”

“Anybody hurt other than yourself?”

Hawthorne had a momentary recollection of the screaming and the ceiling falling. “Yes, others were hurt.”

LeBrun released the wrist. “Fuckin’ great-lookin’ scar.” He laughed. “I got a bunch of them too, but they’re all on the inside.”

“Those are harder to treat.”

“They don’t bother me none. Leastways, not anymore.”

—

The next day after her last class, Kate stopped by the main office to pick up some blue books for a quiz she was planning to give. Mrs. Hayes was on the phone but she waved Kate toward the supply closet. It occurred to Kate that Mrs. Hayes was the only person she knew who had mastered the art of smiling brusquely. The office was a large room with oak desks, oak file cabinets, and oak paneling on the walls, all of it somewhat yellow from the many layers of wax applied over a hundred years. In one corner of the room were a dozen large cardboard boxes with the name “IBM” printed on most and “Hewlett-Packard” on the others.

Behind Mrs. Hayes’s desk the door to the headmaster’s office stood open. As she got her blue books Kate could see Hawthorne sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves. Two stacks of manila folders rose on either side of him. Kate hesitated, then tapped on the door frame. Hawthorne looked up and adjusted his glasses.

“Could I talk to you for a moment?”

“By all means.” Hawthorne got to his feet as she entered and pointed to an armchair with a green leather seat. “Take that chair. It’s the most comfortable.”

Kate hadn’t meant to sit down but she found herself doing so. The reason for her visit suddenly struck her as intrusive and politically unwise. Hawthorne sat on the edge of his desk, facing her. The sleeves of his white shirt were buttoned at the wrist. He looks tired, Kate thought. She heard a bell ring, then the sound of feet in the hall.

“Well, I’m not sure how to begin.” Kate cursed herself for being foolish.

“At the beginning’s always a good place.” When Hawthorne smiled all his tiredness seemed to disappear. “I wanted to thank you for taking charge of Jessica yesterday. She was clearly upset and I wanted the opportunity to talk to Chip.”

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Not Jessica but Chip . . .”

The girl had calmed down in class. Once they had begun their discussion of the verb estar, Jessica had asked the meaning of the word chingada, which had sidetracked the class for the rest of the hour. Chingar—to fuck. Chingada—one of the fucked or a child born as the result of rape.

“What about Chip?”

That morning Kate had heard several faculty members saying that Chip was in trouble and had already made an enemy of the headmaster. Seeing Hawthorne at his desk, Kate had decided to take the opportunity to say something in Chip’s behalf. “I think he’s under a lot of stress. You know, he’s divorced and his wife has the two kids. They live in Littleton. Last week she told him that they were moving to Seattle. I know it doesn’t excuse him, but it might explain why he’s behaving so . . . abruptly.”

Hawthorne scratched the back of his head. “Being new, I realize you all have histories I know nothing about. Is he a friend of yours?”

Kate felt herself blushing slightly. She recalled the thermos of martinis that Chip had taken to the movie theater. “We’re friendly and he’s been kind to me.”

“You know I can’t permit any physical aggressiveness toward the students. It’s hard enough to gain their trust as it is. Chip’s now lost all credibility with that girl. And she’ll tell the other kids. I know very little about Chip Campbell, except that he seems to object to some of my changes and dislikes coming to meetings. I don’t know if he’s been physical with other students, but I mean to find out.”

Kate put her hands on the arms of the chair, intending to stand up, then she relaxed again. “You must see that people are worried about you. Not the students so much as the faculty and staff. They’re worried about their jobs and the security of their futures. For a while it will make them act rather oddly. They’ll have to learn to trust you.”

“Do you trust me?”

Kate wanted to smile but she didn’t. “So far I have no feelings one way or the other. I’m new here and I’m not wedded to the place. I don’t really want to look for another job, but I could easily enough. For many of the others, it would be much harder.”

“It’s certainly not my wish to dismiss anybody,” said Hawthorne, lowering his voice and glancing toward the open door, “but the school needs to be changed. I’m sure you don’t want to hear a whole philosophical discussion . . .”

This time Kate let herself smile. “I think I heard it last week.”

Hawthorne smiled as well. “It’s funny—before coming, everything seemed clear. But the longer I’m in here, the muddier it becomes. That’s not a complaint, just a confession.”

Kate got to her feet. “At least you’re able to make it.”

He walked her to the door. In the outer office, Skander was opening one of the boxes with the new computers. When he saw Kate, he gave her a smile that seemed to indicate such pleasure that she was almost startled.

“I’m glad you two are getting to know each other,” said Skander, putting emphasis on the word glad. He wore a rumpled blue blazer and a blue-and-gold Bishop’s Hill necktie.

“I hope to get to know all the faculty,” said Hawthorne. “Give me a minute to put away some files. Then we can talk. We’ve got about a half hour before the meeting.” He disappeared again into his office.

Skander continued to smile at Kate as he jingled the change in his pockets. “It’s awfully good to see you. I’m sure your classes are going great guns.”

It occurred to Kate, not for the first time, that all of Skander’s actions and ways of speaking were somewhat inflated, as if he were talking to someone who was partially deaf or who only imperfectly grasped the English language. His gestures were all oversized. “They’re going very well, thanks.”

“And it was good of you to take that girl who so upset Chip yesterday.”

“I like her. She’s brash.”

“Used to be a stripper, I gather. Too young, of course, to do it legally. Well, it takes all kinds. We used to have a boy here who augmented his allowance by selling stolen cattle.”

As they spoke, Skander accompanied Kate to the door of the office with one hand resting on her shoulder and the other in his pocket.

“She looks awfully young to have been a stripper.”

Skander patted Kate on the back. “It was apprentice work, surely.”

Hawthorne was locking the file cabinet when Skander entered. “Tell me, who is this girl Gail Jensen who died a few years ago? It’s not clear from her file what happened.”

Skander sat down on the edge of the green armchair and his forehead wrinkled in distress. “A wonderful girl, one of our best. She had stomach pains that she was trying to ignore. It was at Thanksgiving. Turned out to be appendicitis. She died on the operating table, poor thing.”

“She was fifteen?”

Skander nodded. “Old Pendergast was still headmaster and he had to call the girl’s mother. It was awful for everyone concerned. We wanted to establish a scholarship in the girl’s honor but the mother said no. It’s odd how grief can affect some people.”