Charles Grant - Night Songs

"Are you saying Cameron uses his business to garner votes?"

Colin sighed mild disgust and walked toward the intersection of the foyer and the building's single hallway.

"Colin."

He stopped.

The hallway was deserted.

The voice behind him was solemn.

"Bob Cameron has a restaurant, and what he does there is his affair. It's private, and his customers don't have to read his material if they don't want to. On the other hand, this is a public school. We have a trust here, aside from a legal obligation. A word to the wise-don't abuse it."

He nodded without looking back, continued around the corner and headed for the faculty lounge. Once inside, with the door carefully closed behind him, he lashed out with a foot at the nearest chair, wincing when he connected with the aluminum tubing and a shock paralyzed his leg. Idiot, he thought as he hobbled to the back window and looked out at the schoolyard. Idiot-though he wasn't sure yet who deserved the label.

He put his palms on the sill and touched his forehead to the glass, staring at the swing sets, the seesaws, the benches and redwood tables. A man was out there- Denise and Frankie's father-stabbing listlessly at pieces of lunch paper and wrappings with a pole tipped with a nail, stuffing the catch into a canvas sack hanging from his shoulder. Colin watched him for five minutes without the man looking up.

Finally, after a long escaping sigh that fogged the pane, he had to admit that what he had heard wasn't much of a threat. In fact, 'threat' was definitely too strong a word since Efron never had been very effective with thunder. Yet the fact it had been tried made him wonder what, if anything, was next, and if there had been something else on the man's mind that hadn't been said. As he turned away from the custodian cleaning the yard, he wondered what Cameron had said to make Efron act.

He shook himself like a dog shedding rain, and decided he was overreacting to a perfectly reasonable suggestion. After all, it was Efron's job to keep his school and his teachers clean in more ways than one, and Colin was actually surprised it hadn't been brought up before. Surprised because Bill Efron was one of the casino's staunchest supporters, and if Colin won the election they'd be co-members on the Board.

Good lord, he thought with a start, wouldn't that be something else? A hell of a thing, since the Board also hired and fired all the teachers. He could see it all now: a smoke-filled room, a dramatic confrontation, Efron trying to dislodge Colin's tenure, and Colin passionately voting against him. He laughed aloud, once, and looked to the ceiling. It would have to be a first, unquestionably. What other teacher in the state had the power to save his own skin? Not only a first, it was ludicrous. Unreal.

He laughed again, this time to himself, and while laughing made his way back to his room for his jacket and briefcase. A check to be sure nothing was left behind, and he was out of the silent building before anyone could intercept him. He paused on the last step to allow his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and turned right to follow the sidewalk past the school; a sharp left with the cracked pavement and he was heading toward Bridge Road. The block easily stretched twice as long as any he'd ever seen, so long in fact that each street was trisected by narrow concrete pathways lined with hurricane fencing and poplars for shade so pedestrians didn't have to walk all the way to the corner or the shops out on Neptune just to visit a friend.

A flock of gulls swept low overhead, slow-riding the currents like black-and-white kites, and he listened for a moment to their cries on the wind. It was the only sound he could hear, and his footsteps the only proof he wasn't caught in a dream. Nice, he thought as he did each day, very nice indeed.

Across the street there were high-mounted houses clustered under tall trees all the way to the corner, on his side the same until he reached Reverend Otter's fieldstone cottage, one of the few not raised for protection. Then the spired New England church with its vast rock garden on the side and a belfry ringed with a narrow widow's walk for sighting the fleet, the brown clapboard library that used to be someone's home (with an attending fat Doberman asleep and whimpering now in the sun), and finally he reached the corner and Cameron's Clipper Run.

Several cars passed him heading east. Folks on their way to Flocks for a Friday night outing, he guessed. He grinned and waved when one of them honked a horn, and an arm poked out a window to give him a wave back.

A group of kids playing ball in the street across the way.

Someone practicing on a tortured saxophone. Nice, he thought; I should live again and be so lucky.

A fluttering by the restaurant caught his attention, and he peered through the shade under raw-beamed eaves extending over the entrance. There was a white cloth banner tacked above the door, proclaiming the dancing and dinner that would be held tomorrow night, all in the name of a successful season's finish. As if, he thought in mild disgust, every season before this one had been a total disaster. But it was a good way to discover how many votes the man had, and how many he needed to pry away from Colin.

He swung his briefcase out to batter at the hedge, and wondered maliciously where Bob had found the nerve to interfere with his job, but he also remembered those so-called friends he could have met last night, the ones Garve had described to him on the beach at Gran's funeral.

Tomorrow, he thought, should be interesting indeed.

He checked the sky, took a deep breath to smell the ocean, and decided he should go home before dropping in on Peg. He'd been wrestling with the idea all day, and now he felt a chill.

It was time. Perhaps it was too late. When he awoke this morning and watched the dawn shadows slip off the ceiling, he'd realized that not calling her when he'd returned last night was more than breaking an understood promise; it was stalling.

And not done very adroitly at that.

As he reached the police station and turned onto Neptune, he mocked himself for his procrastination. Subtle as a sledgehammer. Ross, you dumb jerk. Thank God you didn't decide to try your hand working for the State Department; World World Three before you even unpack your bags.

"Hey, Mr. Ross."

He blinked and looked to his right, saw El Nichols standing in the station doorway. "Hey, El, how's it going?"

The younger man looked tired, and his uniform was faintly rumpled. "Could be better, could be worse. You know how it is. I think the Screamer's put ants in the town's pants today, though. I've been out on more calls…" He shook his head once to mark his exasperation. "Little old ladies seeing prowlers on their back porches, stuff like that. And in the middle of the day, yet."

"Little old ladies know no clock, El. A prowler's a prowler whether the sun's out or not."

The deputy laughed, a rich and smooth sound that effectively smothered the rest of his souring mood.

"So," Colin said, "you catch any?"

"You kidding?" Eliot slumped against the frame and leaned forward, lowering his voice as if conspiring, or guarding against the ire of his friends. "Hattie over at the library had me go up and down between every damned stack while that monster dog of hers barked his damned fool head off the whole time I was there. Then she made me listen to some theory she has about this Greek or Roman guy named Tantalus and why he did what he did. Jesus, who the hell cares? I never even heard of the jerk.

"Then, I had to go out to Tess Mayfair's boarding place. She say's someone's tramping through her garden killing the flowers. Well, hell, those flowers have been dead since the Fourth of July ten years ago come Sunday, but that don't make a difference to her. No sir. I have to go a hundred yards into the woods out back to prove there wasn't anyone there try in' to rape her."

Colin sighed his commiseration. "You have to admit, though," he said finally, "Tess isn't anyone you'd want to get angry."

"Tell me," Eliot said with a mock shudder. "Three hundred pounds and six feet if she's an inch. I lived there for a couple of years, y'know, but I got out soon as I could swing it. Jesus, I couldn't even bring a date to the living room!"

Colin lowered his head in sympathy.

"And the westerns," El said. "God, the westerns! Even when I did bring someone in, we couldn't do anything. She has six TV sets, and just before I left she got one of those videotape things. My lord in great blue heaven, cowboys shooting up every damned town in the West twenty hours a day, every one of them John for God's sake Wayne." He shook his head with a slight frown. "Do you know that she once took a vacation to Hollywood and spent the whole time sitting in front of some theater or other, just waiting to see him? Can you beat it? Two weeks just waiting to see John Wayne?"

"Big star."

"Dead star," El said, "and I don't think she knows it."

"That bad?"

"I think she lights candles to him every night. It was hell living there, man, believe it."

"Life's rough on the range, pal," Colin said taking a poke at Eliot's arm and receiving a friendly poke in return. He was about to move on when he saw a sudden and somber alteration in Nichols' expression. "You feeling all right, El?"

The man plucked at his shirtfront. "Yeah, I guess so." A deep breath, a loud exhalation. "Well, not really, actually. A little guilty, I think, because I missed the funeral last night. It was that… well, I got tied up, you might say."

"Oh."

"Everything go okay?"

Colin remembered the torch, the look on the girl's face, and it took him a moment before he finally nodded.

"Good. Good. I'd hate to think-" His eyes widened, and his right hand clasped hard over his heart. "Oh my God," he whispered loudly, "you'd better run to get Doc Montgomery, Ross. I think I just now died and ended up in heaven."

Colin almost laughed aloud. With his back to the avenue he was facing the police station's plate glass window; the venetian blinds were down and he could see the other side of the street reflected as clearly as if the glass were a mirror. There was a gray stucco cottage, and a tiny green lawn, and Annalee Covey standing on the stoop. She was in her nurse's whites, a sweater draped over her shoulders, and her dark blonde hair was dancing with the wind. He had to admit she was more than a little stunning.

"Down boy," he said. "Garve will have your heart out with his bare hands for drooling like that on duty."

Eliot curled a lip in well-practiced disgust. "You kiddin'? Garve? Hell, all he ever does is sit in his chair and wait for her to leave, to come home from the doc's office. It's like a religion or something with him. He looks, but that's it. If she ever winked at him, he'd shit in his pants. I keep telling him he oughta have more gumption, like my grandmother used to say, but I don't think he has any more sense than Frankie Adams."

Annalee hurried down to the sidewalk, turned to Colin's right, and when she was in front of the Anchor Inn she angled across the street with a hasty glance at her watch and a waggle-fingered wave to the two men before she vanished.

"A lovely woman," Colin said.

"I can't argue there, but I tell you, Mr. Ross, I don't think he has a prayer."

Colin raised a warning finger. "Mr. Nichols, you must never underestimate the power of a Native American."