The Luck Runs Out (23 page)

“So why celebrate?” said his wife, going down in her sky-blue robe to do the bidding of her lord, although she knew perfectly well who was master and so did he. “Of infamy we have already enough.”

“True, my wife. Oh, ‘boomp! Boomp! Diddum, dad-dum, waddum choo!’ ”

“Children, I hope you feel due gratitude to your father for rearing you in an atmosphere of culture and refinement. No, Thorkjeld, ham and sausage together you may not have. And less sugar on the porridge. I presume you will in due course inform us as to what this brouhaha is all about.”

“Urgh!” said Svenson as he bent with a will to the fueling of the inner man. “Birgit, call the dorms. Get ’em up. Athletic field bleachers seven o’clock; no excuses for absence.”

“Papa, are you going to announce that we’ve got Belinda back?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell us Professor Stott is out of jail?”

“No.”

“Are you—”

“Go!’

Birgit went.

By the time she got back to the table, her father had already finished breakfast and was losing an argument with his wife about wearing his knitted ski cap.

“Thirty percent of the body heat is lost through the top of the head,” Sieglinde insisted. “You will keep your cap on. If not, you will catch the sniffles and set a bad example for the student body.”

“Then I’ll wear the red one Birgit gave me with the big white doodad on top,” said the President sulkily.

“You will not address the college with a doodad on top. You will wear the gray one that matches your sweater and you will behave as a man of dignity. What time will you be home?”

“Who knows?”

Svenson jammed the cap down over his ears and marched for the door. “ ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to war we go!’ ”

“Mama, how do you stand him?” demanded Frideswiede, youngest of the seven sisters.

Her father counterwheeled, snatched his wife in a Rudolph Valentino embrace, and bussed her mightily. “ ‘Farewell, my own. I return with my shield,’ or—What the hell’s the rest of it?”

“For you there is no rest of it,” said his helpmeet, tucking back a strand of flaxen hair and casting a somewhat complacent glance at Frideswiede. “Go, then, I will keep a herring in the window for you.”

“Mama,” said Gudrun, the second youngest, “it’s a candle you’re supposed to keep in the window.”

“Nonsense, my child. A candle would smoke up the glass and drip on the sill. A herring lies looking mournful and bereft. The symbolism is much more meaningful.

Also it comes in handy for smorgasbord later. Get ready now at once or you will miss the school bus.”

At seven o’clock, every student was again in the bleachers. Having been given a little advance warning this time, most of them had managed to get their clothes on. All, needless to say, were agog. Whispers of, “What’s he going to say?” circulated madly through the stands. The consensus was that either Belinda or another body had been found, but their President surprised them, as was his wont.

“Tomorrow,” he thundered, “we enter the Competition. You know that. You’ve trained for it. Now you’re going to win it!”

Roars of, “You said it, Pres!”, “Right on!”, and “Let’s hear it for King Kong!” filled the air. He held up a hand for silence.

“Later we cheer. Today we work.”

“But what about Belinda?” somebody yelled.

“You have heard rumors,” Svenson yelled back, “that our sow was pignapped by subversive elements trying to sabotage our chances at the Competition. Now I must tell you that our wagon has been vandalized!”

Howls of outrage rent the air. Again Svenson quelled the tumult.

“Shut up and listen! The wagon is being repaired. It will be ready to roll tonight. It damn well better be,” he added in an aside to Shandy, “or I’ll nail Flackley’s hide to the chapel door.” The President was a keen scholar of ancient Viking customs.

“The wagon is at Flackley’s smithy, up at Forgery Point,” he went on. “There will be no time to bring it back here for the customary Grand Send-off. Also, to prevent undue strain, only the handlers will ride in it to the fairgrounds. The band will travel by bus early tomorrow morning. Today the band will practice, shine the tuba, get ready. Get readier than you’ve ever been before. You’re going to make your entrance on schedule tomorrow morning, and you’re going to make it good!”

He glared around. “Wagon trimmers, there will be no chance for you to spend all day arguing over how to drape the bunting as usual. You’ll have one hour tomorrow morning at the fairgrounds. Today you organize like Jacques Cousteau going out to photograph a Loch Ness monster. Whatever you need, you get together. There will be no run back to the dorm, Genevieve, and get me a pair of scissors I can cut with. Think! Plan! Make lists! Figure out in advance for the first time in college history what everybody’s supposed to do.”

He went on down the list of things to be done, leaving nothing and nobody out. Enthusiasm ran so high that he had to yell, “Shut up!” a few more times, but he did so in a jovially paternal way. The concept that they had been victims of a heinous plot, that they would triumph over every obstacle and show those crummy saboteurs where to get off, was firing their blood as mere exhortation could never have done. When he concluded with, “And now we need eight volunteers to ride our horses out to Forgery Point tonight,” every man and woman in the bleachers, not excepting Matilda Gables, rose and surged forward.

Swiftly, knowing exactly who could spare the time and who could stick on the back of a saddleless horse over several miles of bad road, Svenson selected his riders. All were sensible, reliable plodders who would be unlikely to distinguish themselves in competition and thus were given an unexpected chance to reap their kudos in advance. One Henry Purvis, a lackluster wight who couldn’t ride, couldn’t plow, couldn’t whang a drum, couldn’t do much of anything except scrape through his classwork and handle any vehicle from a minibike to a bulldozer the way the late Serge Koussevitzky handled a baton, was given the proud task of driving the van that was to carry the harness, nudge along the stragglers, and fetch home the riders after the horses had been delivered to the smithy.

“Who gets to drive the wagon to the fairgrounds?” yelled somebody.

“I do,” said Svenson. “Dismissed.”

“But what if you’re hijacked?” The questioner persisted.

“Urrgh!” the President replied, and nobody could doubt that he meant it.

S
HANDY OUGHT THEN TO
have gone home for breakfast. Helen would be wondering where he’d gone and what he was doing. However, for the first time since he’d laid eyes on Helen Marsh at the airport, he preferred to keep away from her. He called the house from a campus phone.

“I’m up here with the President. We’ve had another general assembly to get organized for the Competition. It’s all hands to the pumps. I don’t know when or whether I’ll be able to get home. If I don’t show up, could you throw a change of clothes in the car and meet me at the fairgrounds tomorrow morning?”

“Peter, are you up to something?” was Helen’s answer, as he might have known it would be.

“Right now I’ve got to ride out to Forgery Point and see how Flackley’s getting on with the wagon,” he replied evasively but truthfully. “I may have to stick around and give him a hand.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“As a matter of fact,” he lied, “I’m calling from the faculty dining room. Will it inconvenience you if I use our car, or shall I try to borrow the President’s?”

“For Heaven’s sake, not Thorkjeld’s! You know he holds that wreck together only by sheer force of will. Iduna and I can always thumb a ride with Grace Porble if we have to. Drive ours by all means. At least I shan’t have to worry about the wheels falling off.”

“Helen, you don’t have to worry about anything,” he protested. “Just—er—stick with Charlotte Brontë. Lots of good stuff in there.”

He hung up quickly. After all, it mightn’t be a bad idea to get something at the dining room. He hadn’t been throwing much business that way lately.

Mrs. Mouzouka herself, head of the cookery department, came to take, his order. “Morning, Professor. All my helpers are grooming horses or pressing uniforms, so you’ll have to make do with poor service and scant choice. Mrs. Svenson was down helping me yesterday, but today I expect she’ll be busy braiding manes and tails.”

Getting the Balaclava Blacks ready for the Competition involved elaborate hairdressing. Nobody had ever been able to emulate Sieglinde Svensoh’s touch with horsehair.

Shandy had an inspiration. “I’ll take whatever you have, and perhaps I can volunteer my wife. She and her friend Miss Bjorklund have been running a sort of amateur breadline for the pig hunters, but I shouldn’t think they’d have any customers today.”

He ate the scrambled eggs and hot cornbread his colleague brought him, then made a second call. “Helen, do you suppose you and Iduna could pitch in here for a while? Mrs. Mouzouka’s trying to run the dining room virtually single-handed.”

Helen said of course they’d be glad to, and Shandy hung up feeling smug. That should give them plenty to do and keep their minds off other things. He got the car and headed for Forgery Point.

Flackley certainly looked as though he’d been working all night, and so did the wagon. Repairs were well along.

“Well, I see we’re going to make it,” was Shandy’s greeting.

“Oh yeah, no sweat.”

The smith rubbed a blackened arm over his moist forehead. “ ’Cept mine, that is. Mind holding the whiffletree while I attach these here fittings?”

“Not at all. I’m relieved to see you found some. The old fittings were broken, weren’t they?”

“Smashed all to hell an’ gone,” Flackley grunted. “I practically had to make these over, but—Ah, now she fits! Smooth as a kitten’s wrist. Hold’er steady, can’t you?”

He tinkered awhile, then ordered, “Okay, let’er go easy. Easy, for God’s sake! If them things snap off—Nope, guess they’re goin’ to hold. Okay, Professor, looks like you c’n go back and tell’em she’ll be ready to roll by the time you get them horses out here. Eight o’clock, you said?”

“Give or take half an hour. We’ll let them amble along at their own pace.”

“Thass ri’, do’ wanna tire ’em out.” Flackley was speaking indistinctly now since he’d put a number of screws into his mouth and gone on to another job. Shandy began to feel his presence redundant, at least in the blacksmith’s opinion. Still he lingered, wandering around the wagon, checking a repair here or there, making approving comments on Flackley’s skill. He himself had cobbled together enough broken, farm equipment to recognize exactly what Flackley was doing and how well the man was doing it. At last he clambered up into the dray.

“I see you’ve got all the barrels screwed back down.” He reached out to twist one in its flange.

Flackley spat out screws. “For Chrissakes,” he yelled, “don’t touch ’em. I spent three, four hours puttin’ them staves back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Couldn’t find nothin’ but that old-fashioned slow-dryin’ glue and she ain’t had time to set yet. Look, Professor, you want to do me a great, big favor?”

“And get the hell out of here?” Shandy finished for him cheerfully. “Sure. I’ll mosey along and break the joyful tidings. I think I’ll also take a little cruise along the old county road as far as the fairgrounds, in case there might be any bad potholes to look out for. They won’t let us take the wagon out on the main highway; you know.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Flackley around another mouthful of screws. “That’s a great idea. See you later.”

“The later the better, eh?” Shandy headed for his car. “Thanks, Flackley, you’ve taken a big load off my mind.” He drove back out to the Seven Forks, stopped at the noisome general store, and used its pay phone to let Miss Tibbett at the college administration building know things were under control at the forge and ask her to spread the word. Then he began a slow, thoughtful progress of the narrow, twisting, ill-paved route over which the wagon would be traveling that night. At several points he stopped the car, got out, and made careful exploration, taking his time, keeping his eyes peeled and his mind on his job.

At last he nodded, stepped on the gas, and headed for home.

He managed to locate Lieutenant Corbin and had a long, earnest talk with the state policeman. Then he put his car away because he wouldn’t be needing it again, went back to the Crescent, and found his house deserted. Helen and Iduna must still be putting their shoulders to the wheel up at the faculty dining room.

That suited him fine. He ate a sandwich that, had been thoughtfully left for him in a Baggie on the kitchen table, drank a glass of milk, and took a nap. At a quarter to five he woke up, took a shower, put on fresh underwear, and topped it with the most villainously tattered work, shirt and pants he possessed. He packed some less disreputable garments into a canvas carryall, put on his old mackinaw, and walked to the faculty dining room.

Helen was waitressing for all she was worth. Though she set a plate of rolls and a glass of water in front of him with professional flair, her greeting was that of any loving wife.

“Peter, couldn’t you find anything else to put on?”

“I have a change with me.”

He showed her the canvas bag. “I wore this rig because I’ll probably have to help unharness and then sleep in the wagon at the fairgrounds.”

“Oh, then you’re going to the fairgrounds?”

“Yes, Thorkjeld and I. The students will come by bus. That way there’s less chance of a breakdown, though Flackley seems to have the repairs well in hand. What’s for supper?”

“Iduna made the most elegant beef stew.”

“Good. Trot it out.”

In due time, Helen was back with a brimming plateful.

“Bon appétit.
It’s on, the house. Mrs. Mouzouka’s so grateful to you for sending Iduna that she’d come and kiss you if she didn’t have her hands in a batch of piecrust. They’re swapping recipes like mad, and I have a hunch she’s warming up to offer Iduna a job.”

“Say, that might be just the ticket! Iduna could move over with Tim and—”

“Yes, dear.”

Helen dropped a kiss on his left ear and went off to serve another table. Shandy finished his stew, ate a double helping of apple pie and ice cream, drank more coffee than he normally would at this hour, shoved a quarter under the plate, managed to snatch a good-bye kiss as Helen whizzed past with a trayful of dishes, and headed for the barns.