Indigo (7 page)

When he got into the shower he shut his eyes and let the water wash away the dirt of the prison floor, the stink of the urine and the memory of all those men. At the spot where that unattached hand had touched him he washed himself especially hard, and only when the water began to turn cold did he get out and wrap himself in a towel. He then found a pair of starched pajamas in his bottom drawer. The pajamas were lovely to step into, the legs opening crisply as he put them on.

Jerry walked through his flat, turning off lights and bolting the door. He then got Charlotte's photograph from his desk, brought it to the bed and crawled in, holding it for a while before placing it on the table by his side.

When he turned off his lamp the quality of the light in the room changed, and he pulled his legs back quickly on the chance that another prisoner's foot might be lingering at the bottom of his bed. God, what a plot these strangers had hatched. Not since he was a child had he felt so vulnerable, and it made him consider what life would be like without orderly laws. How could men live under the old sets of rules, survival of the fittest, an eye for an eye? Not since he was a child had he thought of himself in terms of whether or not he was physically brave. Not since he was a child had such thoughts had any place in his life.

As he lay there, exhausted but completely awake, Jerry imagined himself relating the experiences of the last day and a half. When he told this story would he embellish, would he, perhaps, make it humorous, or would he recount accurately the depth and the surprising quality of his fear? Jerry Neal turned in his bed and decided that this was a story that he would not tell. And as sleep came down to take him he understood that not since Charlotte's death had an event outside himself made him feel so exposed and alone. He was not an introspective man but he did feel uneasy with the idea that should he choose to mine the depths of his heart he was not sure what he would find there, or whether he would like what he found at all.

Though Jerry had set his alarm for six, a group of teachers found Jules and told him to turn the alarm off, to let the man sleep until he woke. Jules took pleasure in stealing into the darkened bedroom and pushing the alarm's button down. The slack flesh of his employer's face drew him, and for a moment he looked at Jerry Neal and felt sorry. He could see the old man who would come in the next few years, the dormant evidence that death waited for us all.

Jerry's bedroom had thick curtains, and when he finally awoke he assumed that, as sometimes happened, he would have another moment or two before his alarm sounded. On these occasions he thought of the extra time as a gift from Charlotte, and he used it to remember a pleasant moment that they had shared or merely to picture Charlotte in some contemplative or restful mood. It was Jerry's practice, during these times, to try to remember an aspect of Charlotte as yet unremembered since its occurrence during her lifetime, and on this morning he remembered Charlotte's outrage with the city of Tillamook over the upkeep of a memorial for those who died in the famous Tillamook fire. Charlotte's grandfather had died in the fire and she was furious that the memorial was unkempt. Jerry envied Charlotte's capacity for outrage and wished he'd found more in himself at yesterday's fire.

Long moments passed and when Jerry heard a pounding on his outside door and looked at his clock, he discovered that it was nearly ten. He jumped from his bed and stormed into the living room, ready to scream at Jules, but the board president was there, and Jules was giving him coffee.

“Jerry,” said Leonard Holtz, “do you need to see a doctor? God, what an experience that must have been.”

“I overslept,” the principal said.

Leonard Holtz threw his briefcase onto a chair. “I've spoken with Biko and I've informed the ambassador. This kind of thing is uncalled for, man. Let them frame another Nigerrian if they're going to frame somebody.”

“I would have called you last night,” said Jerry, “but I didn't trust the phones.”

Leonard said that he'd scheduled a special school board meeting for ten. “Whatever happens,” he said, “I know this time we will be united.”

Jules brought out orange juice and crepes and put two warmed plates on the dining-room table. Jerry wondered if his steward knew the details of what had happened, but when he looked at Jules he couldn't tell, and when Jules was gone again Leonard Holtz lowered his voice. “When the ambassador first heard about this he told me to get you out of the country today,” he said. “He's changed his tune about that but he's calling the president's office this morning. When this ambassador gets worked up there's always hell to pay.”

Jerry guessed he should be grateful for the official American support, but all that had really happened was that he'd been pushed around a little and spent a night in jail. It had not, after all, been so much, and he was embarrassed by his imbalance, by the unreasonable fear he had felt.

“It wasn't really that bad,” he told Leonard. “Once everything's straightened out I'll have another good story to tell.”

The school board president smiled and stood up. “Good,” he said. “I'm glad to hear your spirits are up. Let's get on over to the school and meet the others.”

But Jerry excused himself, saying he'd be right along, and when Leonard left he dressed and then went into the kitchen to pick up his lunch. When he looked inside his sack he could see his thermos, but his sandwich was wrapped in waxed paper, across the top of which Jules had written his name. When Jerry saw it he experienced a little dip in his mood and reached down to tear the name away, leaving a portion of the sandwich exposed. It was a silly thing to have done, perhaps, but it made him feel better. Now whatever happened there would be no evidence that this sandwich, or anything else in the sack, was his.

As Jerry hurried over to the school the chief custodian found him and reported that he'd just spent his third consecutive night sleeping inside the copy machine. “It is strange,” he said. “Like some man know I am there.”

“It's over, Joseph,” Jerry said. “I'm sorry you weren't told, but I know who took the toner.”

“Yessir,” Joseph said, “the culprit is who?”

Jerry found Nurudeen's name on the tip of his tongue, but he held it there, deciding that it might be better to retain some secrecy for a while.

“It was not one of your men, Joseph,” he said.

“Yessir, not one of my men.”

Jerry could see that Joseph wanted to be told, but he suddenly needed to know immediately whether or not Nurudeen was in school, so he left Joseph standing there, saying he'd tell him everything later on. It was good luck that he hadn't expelled the boy. With Nurudeen around, perhaps the key to the truth was at hand.

Inside the main office the school secretary said she was sorry and then handed him a stack of pink message slips, as well as copies of the morning newspapers. The story of his ordeal was everywhere, but there were no photographs. Somehow, during all the time he'd been held, no one had taken his picture, and that suddenly seemed very strange to him, giving him, however briefly, the idea that maybe someone was working on his behalf on the inside.

Leonard Holtz came in and took his arm. “Everyone's waiting,” he said. “Some of them can only stay a minute.”

Jerry was rested and his head was clear but he wanted to use his time finding Nurudeen, reading the stories in the newspapers, and deciding what he should do. A school board had its place, but at the moment it was far less important to him than it wanted to be. Still, Holtz was pulling on him so he tucked the papers under his arm and followed Leonard down the hall, glancing first at the messages that he held. The top one said, “Pamela called.” His secretary had written the additional word “twice” on the memo, but there was no phone number, and no other clue as to what her business might have been.

The school board meeting was short and its tone was supportive. Jerry was told that the school's attorney could be used and that school time could be spent getting to the bottom of it all, but when the meeting ended and he went into his office again, his mood had darkened, and his anger rose, focusing, oddly enough, on the people around him, on the board members and on his steward, on the worthless phone messages that his secretary took. And as he sat there he realized that somewhere along the line he had lost the teacher files. Now what would he do about the damned visas?

There was a knock on his door but Jerry didn't move, and in a moment another message appeared on his floor. “Nurudeen is ill today.” He had asked his secretary to check on the boy, hoping that if Nurudeen were in school he could perhaps push him up against the wall and scare the truth out of him.

Jerry read each of the newspaper articles carefully, but they didn't say much. Each one gave his name, relating the fact that he had been arrested and then released. The papers assumed his guilt and had reserved much of their wrath for the judge who had let him go. “If a Nigerian had committed such a crime what would ‘his own recognizance' mean?” one of the papers asked, and in another, though there was no photograph of Jerry, there was one of the judge who had freed him and a caption which read “Justice thinks American too slow to run.”

Jerry pushed himself away from his desk and smiled into the empty room. He picked up his phone and dialed Lawrence Biko's number and was told that Lawrence was gone. Good, maybe that meant he was on his way to school. Jerry stood and went out into the hall. The best thing now would be to attend to business. There was a school to run and the best thing that he could do was to run it.

In the outer office Jerry told his secretary that if Lawrence came he could be found in the English room where he would be observing class. The school's English teacher was a favorite of his, a woman named Hortense Blyth whom he'd recruited the year before. He loved the woman's name, and since literature had been his own subject, when he'd taught so many years before, he really did enjoy it when he and Mrs. Blyth were occasionally seated together at dinner parties.

As soon as he entered the room, however, Jerry realized that the class being taught was the one that would have contained Nurudeen had Nurudeen been in school. The class quieted, and he feared for a moment that Mrs. Blyth might actually speak to him. But she only smiled, and then continued her lesson, knowing quickly that he was there in an attempt to structure his time.

Jerry felt the tension leave him as he listened to the class. Perhaps he should have remained a teacher when he'd had the chance, all those years ago. He remembered a discussion he and Charlotte had had on the eve of his first administrative job, a sudden appointment that took him from his classroom in the middle of the term. He and Charlotte had talked about what it would mean to lose contact with the students he loved, but his administrative star had risen, and in the end he hadn't missed teaching very much. Now, though, he saw the wonder of the classroom freshly and the thought struck him that, in the end, he might go back. Some administrators did that, he was sure that they did. Some went back and taught again.

He had not been aware of the time and was surprised when the period ended only a few minutes after he entered the room. He would have stayed for another one, but as the students filed out his secretary appeared at the door and waved until he looked at her.

“Someone is here now,” she said, so Jerry went back to the office slowly, to the rhythm of the passing students and the sudden belief that someday he would teach again.

But when he entered the office it wasn't Lawrence Biko who was there. Instead an attractive woman sat in the reception area, and Jerry thought he knew immediately that this was Nurudeen's stepmother. She was a poised and calm-looking woman, and Jerry was suddenly certain that she was fed up with the turncoat nature of Nurudeen's dad. She would tell him now what was really going on.

“Pamela,” said his secretary, reading from a slip of paper in her hand.

“Good morning,” the principal said.

The woman was young, perhaps not yet thirty-five, and she was quite tall. She had an open and beautiful face and eyes that seemed to scan Jerry quickly, ignoring his principal's facade and looking directly at the man underneath. She was delightful. “Good of you to see me,” she said.

Jerry opened the door to the inner office and waited while the woman walked through. She moved like an American and he quickly thought of the comatose minister's secretary again. Once inside the room he turned and shook the woman's hand. “How do you do?” he said.

He felt foolish, a little nervous to have such a beautiful woman so close, but he nevertheless sat down on the same side of his desk as she did. It then occurred to him that perhaps he'd picked up a virus in that cell; he was flushed and suddenly so nervous he thought he might be ill.

“Would you like some coffee?” he asked. “Perhaps a cup of tea?”

“No,” the woman said. “I have only come to pay my respects. I promised I would do so, so here I am.”

Jerry didn't understand but he pressed forward, asking, “How is your family? I trust everyone is well.” Now, if she chose to, she could tell him the truth. Though she had said barely a word Jerry was hopeful that he'd found someone he could trust. Perhaps this woman would be his friend, someone familiar with the enemy camp.

But the woman seemed surprised and said only, “Actually they are in the east and I have not yet had time to look in on them.”

Good, thought Jerry. Nurudeen was not in school because he was in the east. Already this conversation was proving to be beneficial.

“I am very glad that you have come,” he said. “Now, at least, we will be able to clear up some of the confusion.”

The woman smiled. “I am very happy to be here,” she said, “but I am beginning to think we are talking at cross-purposes. I am Pamela…? I left a message before. I was under the impression that you were expecting me.”