Shadowland (17 page)

 
   One circumstance — really an image — suggests otherwise: after Del had been called from Thorpe's class in the usual manner, the first thing he saw in the artfully bookish office was the proposal he had typed six days before — it lay alone on the polished desk. Del immediately assumed that Broome wanted to talk to him about it, and most of his fear left him. After all, why would anyone think that
he,
of all the boys at Carson, would want to steal a glass bauble?

 
   'So your interest in magic goes deeper than card tricks,' Broome said, smiling enigmatically.

 
   'Much deeper, sir,' Del replied.

 
   'Just how deep does it go?'

 
   Del thought he was being honestly questioned, thatBroome was interested in him. He said, 'It's what I care about most.'

 
   'I see.' Broome leaned back in his chair and put the soles of his shoes on the edge of his desk — the model, in his striped shirt sleeves, horn-rims, and posture, of a concerned academic and administrator. Even the dozing dog beside the chair fitted this picture. 'It's what you care about most. Do you intend to pursue a career in that rather, uh, unusual field?'

 
   'I'd really like to,' Del said. 'I'm pretty good already.'

 
   'Yes, I bet you are.' Broome smiled. 'And what do you think about magic — about tricks and all that?'

 
   'Oh, it's a lot more than just tricks,' Del answered happily. 'It's entertainment, and it's surprises, and . . . ' He hesitated. 'And it's about a whole way of looking at things.'

 
   'I see that you are indeed serious,' Broome said. He took his feet off the edge of his desk and pushed the proposal a half-inch to one side. 'Have you been happy here, during this first semester?'

 
   'Pretty happy,' Del said. 'Most of the time.'

 
   'I gather that you've been given an unfortunate nickname.'

 
   'Oh, well,' Del said. 'It's pretty bad, yes, sir.'

 
   'I could think of better ones for you.'

 
   This put Del off guard, and he asked, 'What are they, sir?'

 
   'Thief. Sneak. Coward. Wasn't that clear?'

 
   From this point the questioning proceeded in the familiar manner.

 
6

 
Economics Lesson

 
While his father cut his time at the office in half, and then to a third, Tom dreamed of the vulture again. By the time of the last dream, Hartley Flanagan had lost forty pounds, and even if he had felt like pretending to be a healthy manand going through his routine of legal work and workouts at the Athletic Club, he would have been embarrassed by the way the skin hung on his cheeks, his suits on his bones. Finally he had energy enough only for the hospital and home.

 
   By now, we are in basketball season — one week into winter weather. Tom is not his usual energetic self in school these days, and his work has fallen off: he is afraid of failing his exams, afraid he is going crazy, of being kicked off the JV basketball team; mostly he is afraid of what is happening to his father. Death has never been so real to him as it is now, and when he thinks of a future without his father, without
a
father, he sees a black valley bristling with threats.

 
   
Yes,
the vulture says to him. So now he can understand it.

 
   
Yes. That is so. A black valley full of threats. But, dear boy, what else did you expect. To be a child forever?

 
   No, but . . .

 
   
You did.

 
   I did.

 
   The vulture, still in that hot sandy place where there are no shadows, nods intelligently.

 
   
And you know what happens when you go into that valley?

 
   Tom cannot answer: a fear as large as himself has slithered into his skin.

 
   
Why, you die, boy. It's that simple. Without protection, you die.

 
   His father's corpse swings around on a rope to face him.

 
   
Iam your father now, boy. Me. I'm your old man now, me and everything else in the valley.

 
   The fear inside him began to shake.

 
   The vulture came toward him, looking him brightly and intelligently in the eye.

 
   Foul thing. Carrion-eater. Maggot.

 
   
Enough, little bird.
The vulture rustled its wings, stabbed its great yellow beak forward, and impaled his hand. His own screams woke him up.

 
Skeleton Ridpath, that same night, is dreaming of an anthill in which the ants have the faces of the freshmen — they are scurrying around on little plots and errands,

 
   rushing through corridors and passageways, twittering to each other. He has a rake, and is about to shatter the anthill when he hears a loud booming noise, a crashing like huge waves. For an instant he sees a nondescript brown hat pulled down to shade a probing inhuman face, and terror fills him, and then he wakes up and the booming, crashing sound is all about him. He knows what it is, and is almost afraid to look at the window; but finally he does look, and tastes vomit backing into the chamber behind his tongue. An enormous white owl, weirdly bright against the black window, is opening its shoulders and battering the glass. He can see every feather of the big wings. The owl wants
in,
it demands to enter, and Skeleton knows perfectly well that if he opens the window it will tear him to pieces. Its head is almost the size of his own. Poor Skeleton shudders back against the wall, a primitive part of his mind afraid too that the eagle on his ceiling will come to life and swoop down to take his eyes. He covers his eyes with his fists and shoves his face into the pillow.

 
7

 
Two days before Christmas break, it was my turn to take the attendance sheet to the administrative office before chapel. Mrs. Olinger, dressed as always in her lumpy gray cardigan, was conducting one of those standoffish fights between the teachers and the staff common at any school. Her victim was Mr. Pethbridge, the French teacher. Pethbridge was languid and effete, with blond hair and a large handsome mouth. He always wore tweed suits slightly tucked at the waist — French, like his thin, elegant eyeglasses. Mrs. Olinger had little time for him, and she took so much grim delight in their dispute that she did not want to interrupt it for me.

 
   'Well, I don't see why it has to be in a different place every time,' Mr. Pethbridge complained. He was carrying a big stack of his examination papers, and his physical attitude, chin lifted, belly thrown out, seemed to express one word:
Women!

 
   'You don't.'

 
   'I'm afraid not, my dear.'

 
   'This is a working office, Mr. Pethbridge. Our files are in constant use. Our files are
growing.
There is also a security aspect.'

 
   'Oh, my dear.'

 
   'Does it cause you any inconvenience, Mr. Pethbridge?'

 
   'Yes, Mrs. Olinger. Instead of simply putting my exams in a file I can easily find, I have to wait for you to determine where they should go, using random-number theory, I am certain, which takes valuable time — '

 
   'And when you do not wash your coffeecups, Mr. Pethbridge, it sets a bad example for the others and costs me valuable time.'

 
   Skeleton Ridpath came up beside me, holding some change in his fist. He scowled at me from deep inside his bony, bruised-looking face, took a step to one side, and knocked a heap of textbooks to the floor.

 
   As I stooped to pick them up, silently cursing both Mrs. Olinger and Skeleton, the school secretary began to rattle away in a calm, dogged, infuriated way about the relative merits of her lost time as compared to the French teacher's, and finally moved to the counter to take Skeleton's money and push a notebook toward him. Skeleton contemptuously took the textbooks from me and drifted off to the side. Mrs. Olinger accepted my list and said, 'Why will you boys insist on hanging around the office when you must have better things to do?'

 
   When I left, Skeleton was still idling at the back of the corridor, pretending to adjust his watch.

 
   Later that afternoon Mr. Broome passed word down through Mrs. Olinger and Mr. Weatherbee that he wanted Morris' Jazz Society and the Magic Circle to demonstrate their skills to the entire school in an hour-long program to be scheduled in April. Mr. Weatherbee read the memo to us at the end of the day: Morris looked nervous, Tom and Del were obviously excited.

 
8

 
Christmas break was the usual happy respite from school, except for one boy in our class. We went to visit my grandparents in Los Angeles; Morris and his parents went for a skiing holiday in Aspen, and Morris used the long slopes to work out in his head which songs his trio might play least badly during their half-hour. Everyone else stayed home for the traditional Christmas. When my family returned from California, I took a bus to Tom Flanagan's house and was told that Tom was out. There was no tree, no Christmas decoration, merely an enormous random-looking pile of books and games on the living-room floor. His mother was very haggard. The evident worry on her face, the lack of seasonal decoration contrasted with the job lot of presents: desolation.

 
9

 
The semester examinations, held over four days in the drafty field house beneath ancient photographs of football players with their arms about each other's shoulders, the uniforms, stances, and even the faces dated, were difficult but fair, proving that what the school appeared to be and what it was could occasionally mesh. Long, staggered rows of boys wearing crew-neck sweaters scribbled, blew their noses and sucked at lozenges, scratched their heads and gazed at the dead youthful football players. Mr. Fitz-Hallan and Mr. Ridpath, reading
The Far Side of Paradise
and
Quarterbacking
respectively, sat at a long table at the head of the rows. For Tom Flanagan the long exams in the field house seemed like hours entirely out of time, perhaps out of space as well — the world beyond the rows of desks and sneezing boys could have changed seasons, been taken by hurricane to Oz, or gone dark at midday and turned to ice. The results, in most cases similar to those of theprevious examinations, contained a few surprises. When we thronged around the notice boards outside the library two weeks later, Tom saw that he had managed one B, but otherwise had his usual C's; Del had failed nothing, had in fact done astonishingly well — a row of B's. And when Tom and Del risked a glance at the seniors' list, they saw that Skeleton Ridpath had five A's.