Shadowland (6 page)

 
   His telephone rang for the sixth time since I had been in his office. He said, 'Christ,' picked up the phone, and said 'Yeah,' and motioned me to put the new record on the turntable.

 
   I tuned out and relaxed into the couch. Sherman ranted. He was a very skillful ranter. He had a law degree. Also he had an ulcer, the nerves of a neurotic cat, and what I assumed was the highest income of anyone from our class. In these days his wardrobe was always very studied, and today he wore a tan bush jacket, aviator glasses tinted yellow, and soft knee-high yellow boots. He clamped the phone under his chin, crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the window, and gave me a sour grin.

 
   'I'll tell you something,' he said when he had put the phone down. 'Fielding should bless his soul that he never decided to go into the music business. And he had more talent than most of these bozos we manage. Is he still trying to get his Ph.D.?'

 
   I nodded. 'This will sound funny, but when you were leaning against the window like that just now, you reminded me of Lake the Snake.'

 
   'Now I
really
wish I was out on the Island. Lake the Snake.' He laughed out loud. 'Laker Broome. I better clean up my act. What made you think of that?'

 
   'Just the way you were standing.'

 
   He sat down and put his boots on the long desk. 'That guy should have been locked up. He's not still there, is he?'

 
   'He retired years ago — forced out, really. I wouldn't have worked for him.' I had just quit the school myself, after three years of teaching English there. 'I never asked you this before, or if I did, I forgot the answer. What did Lake the Snake say to you, that first day? When he kept you and Nightingale in his office.'

 
   'The day we registered?' He grinned at me. 'I toldyou, but you forgot, you asshole. That's one of my favorite party bits. Ask me again after dinner on Saturday night, if you're still coming.'

 
   Then I did remember — we had been in his father's 'den' one warm day in late fall, drinking iced tea from tall glasses with
Party Time!
embossed on their sides. 'I'd come just to hear it,' I said. I was in New York on my way to Europe, and Sherman and Fielding were the only people there I cared to visit. And Sherman was a good cook whose dinner parties had a bachelor's haphazard lavishness.

 
   'Great, great.' He was already a little distant, and I thought he was thinking again of the grievances given him by his twenty-year-old geniuses. 'I saw Tom Flanagan on the street the other day,' he said. 'He looked really strange. He looked about forty years old. That guy's nuts. It doesn't make any sense, what he's doing. He's working some toilet over in Brooklyn called the Red Hat Lounge. Magic is going to come back when Glenn Miller climbs out of the Channel. When Miss America has . . . '

 
   'Bad teeth?'

 
   'A mastectomy,' Sherman said.

 
On Saturday night there was as much of a lull in the after-dinner conversation as Sherman ever permitted in the days before he moved to Los Angeles. The famous folksinger seated to my left had wiped food from his beard and described a million-dollar drug deal just concluded by two other famous folk singers; the woman with Bob, a blond with the English country-house good looks to which he was always attracted, had opened a bottle of cognac; Sherman was leaning on one elbow, picking bits of bacon out of what was left of the salad.

 
   'My friend across the table wants to hear a story,' he said.

 
   'Great,' said the folksinger.

 
   'He wants to be reminded of the famous Lake the Snake, and how he welcomed me to his school. On our first day we had to fill in registration forms, and when it asked for my favorite subject, I put down 'Finance.'' The girl and the singer laughed: Sherman had always been good at telling stories. 'Lake the Snake was the headmaster, and when a fat little shit named Whipple who taught history showed him my form, he kept me back in his office after he made his welcome-to-the-school speech. Another little kid was kept behind with me, and he sent him out into the hall. I was practically shitting my pants. Lake the Snake looked like an Ivy League undertaker. Or a high-class hired killer. He was sitting at his desk just smiling at me. It was the kind of smile you'd give somebody just before you cut his balls off.

 
   ''Well,' he said. 'I see you are a comedian, Sherman. I don't really think that will do. No, it won't do at all. But I'll give you a chance. Make me laugh. Say something funny.' He braced his hands behind his head. I couldn't think of a single word. 'What a pathetic little boy you are, Mr. Sherman,' he said. 'What is the motto of this school? No answer?
Alis volai propriis.
He flies by his own wings. I presume that now and again he touches ground too. But he does fly, the kind of boy we want here. He doesn't look for cheap laughs and gutter satisfactions. Since you are too much of a coward to speak up, I'll tell
you
something. It's a story about a boy. Listen carefully.

 
   ''Once, a long time ago, this certain boy, who was, let me see, fourteen years old, left his warm cozy little house and went out into the wide world. He thought he was a funny little boy, but in reality he was a simpleton and a coward, and sooner or later he was bound to meet a bad end. He went through a city, and he made little comments that made people laugh. He thought they were laughing at his little comments, but in fact they were laughing at his presumption.

 
   ''It so happened that the king of that country was proceeding through the city, and the boy saw his golden carriage. This was a splendid affair, made by the king's craftsmen, and it was of solid gold, drawn by six magnificent black chargers. When the carriage passed the boy, he turned to the good citizen beside him and said, 'Who's the old fool in the fancy wagon? He must weigh as much as all six horses. I bet he got rich by stealing from people like you and me, brother.' You see, he was interested in
finance.
He expected his neighbor to laugh, but the neighbor was horrified — all citizens in that country loved and feared their king.

 
   
'
'The king had heard the boy's remark. He stopped the carriage and immediately bade one of his men to dismount and take the boy by force back to his palace. The men dismounted and grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him yelling through the streets all the way to the palace.

 
   ' 'The servant pulled the boy through the halls of the palace until they reached the throne room. The king sat on his throne glaring at the boy as the servant pulled him forward. Two savage dogs with chains on their necks snapped and snarled at the boy, but kept guard by the sides of the throne. The boy nearly fainted in terror. The dogs, he saw, were not only savage, but starved down nearly to madness.

 
   '''So, little comedian,' the king said. 'You will make me laugh or you will die.' The witless boy could only tremble. 'One more chance,' said the king. 'Make me laugh.' Again, the boy could not speak. 'Go free, Skuller,' snapped the king. The dog on the right flew forward toward the boy. In a second he held the boy's right hand between his teeth. The king told the boy to make a joke
now.
The boy turned white. 'Go free, Ghost,' the king said, and the dog on the left flew forward and bit down on the boy's left hand.

 
   '' 'You see where tasteless remarks get you,' said the king. 'Begin to eat, my dogs.'

 
   ' 'Begin to eat, my dogs,'' Sherman repeated, shaking his head. 'I practically fell on the floor and puked. Lake the Snake just kept looking at me. 'Get out of here,' he said. 'Don't ever come back here again for a stupid reason. like this.' I sort of wobbled toward the door. Then I heard something growling, and I looked back and a great goddamned Doberman was getting to its feet beside his chair. 'Get out!' Lake the Snake shouted at me, and I ran out of that office like fiends were after me.'

 
   'Holy shit,' mumbled the folksinger. Shennan's girlfriend was staring at him limpidly, waiting for the punch line, and I knew he had told this story, which by now I remembered perfectly, many times before.

 
   Sherman was grinning at me. 'I see it's all come back to you. When I was nearly at the door, that sadist behind the desk said
'Alis volat propriis,
Mr. Sherman.' I saw a signon the wall next to his door, where you'd see it every time you left his office. It said, 'Don't wait to be a great man. Be a great boy.''

 
   'Be a fuckin' son-of-a-bitch bastard,' the folksinger said, and then looked up confused because Sherman and I were both laughing. The country-house blond was laughing too: Sherman could always make women laugh. I had learned a long time before that this ability was a large part of his undoubted sexual success.

 
5

 
Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale had picked up their freshman beanies like the rest of us from the carton just inside the library doors, and at the end of Registration Day they stood for a moment together at the entrance to the school, trying them on. 'I think they're one-size-fits-none,' Tom said. Both boys' beanies were a quarter-size too large and swam on their heads. 'Don't worry, we can swap them tomorrow,' Tom said. 'There were a lot left over in that box. Do you know how to wear these, by the way? This little bill is supposed to be two fingers above the bridge of your nose.' Using the first two fingers of his right hand to demonstrate, he adjusted the cap with his right. Nightingale imitated him, and brought the brim down to the level of his topmost finger.

 
   'Well, it's only for the first semester,' Tomsaid. But then, at the beginning, they shared a secret pleasure in wearing the absurd caps: Tom because it meant that he was in the Upper School — the entrance to adulthood. If Tom thought of the Upper School as the realm of beings who were almost men — the seniors did look alarmingly like real adults — for Del it was something simpler and more comprehensive. He thought of it, without being quite aware of the thought, as a place which might become home. Tom at least was at home in it.

 
   At that moment, he wanted Tom Flanagan to befriend him more than anything else in the world.

 
Of course I am ascribing to the fourteen-year-old Del Nightingale emotions which I cannot be sure he possessed. Yet he must have been very lonely in these first weeks at Carson; and I have Tom's later statement to me that 'Del Nightingale needed a friend more than anyone else I'd ever met. I didn't even know, this is how innocent I was, that anyone
could
need a friend as badly as that. And you know how schools are: if you want something, security or affection, very badly, it means that you're not going to get it. I didn't see why that should always be true.' The statement shows that Tom was more sensitive than his appearance ever indicated. With his gingery hair, his short wiry athletic body, his good clothes a little scuffed and rumpled, he looked chiefly as though he wished he held a baseball in his hand. But another thing you thought you saw when you looked at Tom Flanagan was an essential steadiness: you thought you saw that he was incapable of affectation, because he would never see the need for it.

 
   I think Del Nightingale looked at him bringing the school beanie down to the level of two fingers balanced on his nose, and adopted him on the spot.

 
'That trick you were showing me isn't in my book,' Tom said. 'Sometime I'd like to see how it goes.'

 
   'I brought a lot of card books with me,' Del said. He dared not say anymore.