“Then keep the money.” Sal took a step deeper into the water. “I’m glad to do you the favor. We’re buddies, right? Keep the whole thing.”
“You didn’t say if I’d told you the joke.”
“An enema, goddamnit. That’s how you brainwash an Italian. You give him an enema!”
“Don’t talk to me like that, Sally. I always been polite to you.”
Sal stood up to his ankles in the water. His head felt full of yelling, and in the midst of the clamor he realized he was going to piss himself just like the kid in the liquor store.
“Bishop’s Hill,” said Frank. “Bishop’s Hill Academy. I love names like that. You can almost smell the money. Me, I never got past tenth grade. Thought of taking the G.E.D. at one point, but why bother? I don’t need a fuckin’ piece of paper saying I can count. But this cooking job at Bishop’s Hill, it’ll be like being in school again, except nobody’s going to be shouting at me or pushing me around or making fun of me. Shit, I’ll even get paid. Can you beat that?”
“Let me go, Frank.”
“No can do.”
“I’m a friend, right. I won’t say anything. You can even have my car. Let me go.”
“I already got a car.”
“I got the money from the other jobs at my place. I’ll give it to you. Just follow me back.”
Frank zipped up his backpack, then swung it onto his left shoulder. “I’m not dumb, Sally. Stupidity’s not my problem. It’s like an insult to think I’m dumb.”
Sal stepped deeper into the water. There was something in Frank’s hand but it wasn’t a gun. It was something small.
“You do a little business for a while,” said Frank, “then it comes to an end. It’s fall and I got to go to school. Did I tell you that joke about what elephants use for tampons?”
The ice pick in his hand was tilted so it wouldn’t catch the moonlight. Frank grinned and rested his arm on Sal’s shoulders, a friendly gesture. Sal tried to step away, but it was too late. Perhaps he felt the prick of the needle point at the base of his skull but most likely it happened too fast to feel even that. Frank shoved the ice pick upward into the softness, then gave it a little swirl, cutting a cone shape into “the gray stuff,” as he called it. Then he slipped it out. Sal’s whole body was twitching and jittering. He grabbed Sal’s shoulder with one hand and the seat of his pants with the other. He walked him deeper into the water. Sal himself wasn’t walking; he was dead weight.
“Sheep, asshole, that’s what elephants use for tampons.” He lowered Sal into the water so he wouldn’t splash. It was like those baptisms he’d seen on TV. He liked the idea of making Sal clean again. Frank pressed his foot down on Sal’s back to force the air out of his lungs—the bubbles burst around him like farts, like farting in the bathtub, and that made Frank chuckle.
“Think of it this way,” he told Sal, “I’m saving you from ever being sent to jail.”
Frank turned and walked back to shore with the water running off his clothes. He was going to school. He was almost excited.
Two
Because she was interested but still expected to be bored, the woman sat in the back row over by the window so if she wished she could turn her attention to the late-afternoon sun laying its orange light across the playing fields, where some half-dozen young men were kicking a soccer ball as if it represented the very acme of earthly endeavor. Her name was Kate Sandler and she had been teaching Italian and Spanish at Bishop’s Hill since January, when her predecessor, Mr. Mead, had given the school two days’ notice before relocating to the west coast of Mexico, “for his health,” he had said, “both mental and physical.” As a divorced mother with a seven-year-old son, Kate had felt lucky to get the job. Now, three weeks into the fall semester, her sympathies lay with the absent Mr. Mead. Kate was trim, athletic, and thirty-four with shoulder-length black hair that she wore in a ponytail at school. Reaching back from her left temple was a white streak about an inch wide that had made its appearance while she was still in college. At the time she had been sorry to turn prematurely gray but the white streak had been the extent of the change and now she valued it as something that made her memorable to clerks and garage mechanics.
Eighteen of Kate’s colleagues sat in front and to her left; the remaining three or four probably wouldn’t appear. Kate thought of them all as survivors—some she liked, some she didn’t, others she hardly knew. Now she felt herself to be a part of them. She, too, was a survivor. In the spring semester, she had been invited to several dinners, she had gone on one rather dreary date, and once, when her daffodils were in bloom and she was feeling optimistic, she had invited an older couple over to her small house for lasagna. Still, there was no one to whom she felt particularly close.
The meeting was scheduled for five and it was nearly that now. Her colleagues were beginning to look attentive, turning from their slouched positions and perfunctory conversations. Green shades were drawn down over the top half of the high windows, giving an aquatic tint to the ceiling. The dark oak woodwork had been recently polished and the air retained the faint aroma of Murphy’s Soap. Next to Kate, Chip Campbell, the history teacher and swimming coach, patted her knee and said, “Let’s vamos, buster!” But whether he meant that they should leave immediately or that he wanted the meeting to begin, Kate couldn’t decide. Chip had a round red face and the look of a former athlete who has gone to seed. His short sandy hair was brushed back in a ragged flattop. He had taught at Bishop’s Hill for twelve years. Before that he had taught in public schools in Connecticut until, as he said, he couldn’t stand the bullshit anymore.
Directly in front of Kate sat Alice Beech, the school nurse, in her white uniform. She glanced over her shoulder at Chip, then smiled at Kate before turning away. Chip directed a mocking smile at her back. He and a few others claimed that Alice was a lesbian, but Kate had no proof one way or the other. Nor did she care. Alice was an unattached single woman in her midthirties. Her short dark hair was perfectly straight and clung to her skull like a cap. The nurse had always been pleasant to Kate, and sometimes they sat together at lunch.
People grumbled about attending a meeting so late in the day but their annoyance was offset by curiosity about the new headmaster, Dr. Hawthorne, who’d been observed since his arrival three days earlier but not officially met. A number of faculty had asked Fritz Skander what they were in for. Skander only smiled and said, “I guess we’ll find out.” But Hawthorne had made his presence felt right from the start when he indicated that he wanted faculty cars parked in the lot behind Douglas Hall, not in the circle in front of Emerson. And there were other indications: the grounds crew had grown more active and a number of litter baskets had suddenly appeared. And Kate had seen him at lunch talking to students—a tall man in his thirties with a thin, angular face and light brown hair.
The heavy door at the front of the room opened and Fritz Skander entered, followed by Hawthorne, Mrs. Hayes—the school secretary—and a third man whom Kate recognized as one of the trustees, Hamilton Burke, a lawyer from Laconia. Burke was about fifty and portly in a three-piece blue suit. He looked as serious as if he were standing before the Supreme Court.
Skander seemed especially genial and winked at several of the faculty who caught his eye. He was perhaps forty-five, rectangular without being heavy, and with a full head of thick gray hair that crossed his brow in a straight line. He was a man with a lot of charm and fond of wearing humorous neckties. When Kate had met him in January she had thought they would become friends but she hadn’t learned much more about him than she did at that first meeting; and while Skander was affable, even effusive at times, Kate came to realize that was just his manner and didn’t necessarily reflect his interior self. Skander was several inches shorter than Hawthorne, who was also smiling, although his eyes were alert. Kate couldn’t blame him for being tense, if that was what it was.