by Robert Stone
“John!” the pastor exclaimed when his security lights caught Clammer about to knock on his door. “Lemme unlock it. I thought you was in the hospital, John. I thought your mother said you was under the weather.”
As they sat by a lamp in the living room section, John explained himself. The lampshade had a deer-hunting scene printed on it: a hunter in an orange hat, his scope-enabled rifle, bright green trees, some sky. As far from the hunter as possible stood a twelve-point buck, an eastern deer, flag-tail up, poised to flee. The scene was made to fit two and a half times on the amount of plastic shade around the lamp.
“No, sir,” John Clammer said. He told of how he had gone to the very so-called college his posturing wife had left him to attend. There he made an example of how the Lord would not be mocked with impunity. He had found the bitch who lived with his wife for evil writings.
“This!” he said. “Read it!” He trembled. He raised his fine eyes from the hunting scene on the lampshade and stared into the darkness under the artificial eaves. “For it is a screed! Yes, my good Reverend Fumes! A screed! But the little bitch is dead.”
“You killed somebody, John? You didn’t kill somebody.”
John Clammer laughed and handed him a copy of a tabloid-size newspaper. The Gazette.
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes, my good doctor.”
“Take it easy, John boy,” Reverend Dr. Fumes said.
“She saw the glint of my rifle before I brought her down. And she fled me through the streets of that city screaming. She fled me. Down the nights and down the days!” John yelled, and it might have been a rebel yell or even a scream, as if in imitation of the young woman victim. “Down the labyrinthine ways!”
“Fuck sake,” the preacher said, “take it easy.” He put the newspaper aside. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll turn myself in. I’ll accept the penalties.”
“Jesus, John, did you really do this?” Reverend Fumes looked away from the lamp and began to turn slow circles where he stood. “O Lord, my heart is troubled. My heart is blazing.”
The reverend, a small man, was overwhelmed by John Clammer’s presence and his declarations.
“I’ll help you, John,” he said. But how? He hoped that God might be seen as glorified in the events he was hearing about. He tried hard to find the workings of the divine will. He wondered if there was some way in which he himself could be seen as an instrument of glory.
Reverend Fumes sat back down beside the deer-hunting lamp and listened breathlessly while John Clammer told and retold the story of Maud’s murder.
He presented the image of Maud clinging to his knees. After the echo of the last shot died, she had fallen at his feet in a posture of repentance. He had pitied her.
“I have forgiven the woman,” John Clammer said. “That’s what’s most important.”
John told Reverend Fumes he was in agony but would resolve it by accepting responsibility for his crime.
“Where’s your rifle, John?” Dr. Fumes asked.
He said he had disposed of it in the forest. He said he invoked John Brown. He made Reverend Fumes swear to keep the secret of his blood guilt until he had presented himself to the police. He made the reverend bless him. As John Clammer poured forth his story, the reverend reflected more and more deeply on the role in which the Almighty had placed him. It might be that God had elected him to be the medium through which the work of his dread instrument John Clammer was made manifest to a chastened world. That the reading of the sacred dice cast behind the temple veil and enacted by this boy be announced from the Church of the Savior by its humble pastor. That it must fall to John to confess his blessed vengeance from within its precincts.
When John Clammer rose to go back to his pickup, Reverend Fumes blocked his path.
“Rest, John Clammer. We’ll speak to the cops from the garden of Naboth while the dogs lick that bitch’s blood.”
He had hoped to please Clammer and persuade him that his wife or his wife’s friend would be Jezebel. And there in the land where John Brown was being respected anew in a way not necessarily associated with people of color, there might be a singing of John’s favorite hymn, “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow.” Then Fumes would be Elijah-like and the church would be Naboth’s vineyard and television’s millions would bear witness and Fumes and the church would be exalted and theirs would be the kingdom and the power and the glory and the television exposure and the publicity and maybe the reality show. Michaiahjeroboamramethgileadsabaoth.
“Call from here, John. Surrender here in God’s house. It’ll be like . . .” Fumes thought about what it would be like. “It would be like sanctuary! Yeah! It would be like sanctuary. And they’d come out and like a hostage situation, Johnny!”
But John Clammer flung him aside like an old blanket and marched out the door and drove away toward town.
So Reverend Fumes had no choice but to get on the phone and call the sheriff’s department.
“He confessed to me!” he shouted into the phone. “He’s armed to the death on the county road! He confessed that evil woman’s killing. He’s armed to the teeth and headed for town.”
26
STACK PUT OFF CALLING Salmone and the idea of going to the college. Attacks of dizziness kept striking him down, and in his grief, in despair, he felt older than he had ever been.
Then one day Salmone called him and said, “Eddie, I owe you the trip down. We still don’t have the driver.”
In another time and season they would have gone to Belmont or Shea from Stack’s house. They had gone to those places on one or another of Salmone’s visits years before, when Maud and her mother were alive.
Stack embraced his ex-partner and said there was nothing to drink; he was doing one day at a time. So they drank coffee, which agreed with neither of them terribly well.
Before they had talked very much Stack asked his dreadful question.
“You knew my brother-in-law?” Stack asked. “Charlie K.?”
“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know him. I heard about him years ago. I guess I knew he was your in-law.”
“What did you hear about him, Sal? I have to ask this.”
“Years ago, you know. Long time. Just who he was. Who he knew. Like his exploits.”
“Listen. What I’m asking. Is there, was there—as far as you’re aware—any possibility of malice against this family? Maybe Maud paid for a mistake.”
“The mistake she made was fucking Brookman. The fucking guy Brookman, I mean. What do you mean, Charlie Kay?”
“His exploits in the thing happened downtown.”
“You mean that—”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Eddie.”
“Help that might have gone to Maud in college. Minuscule amount. Fucking minuscule. Through him as her uncle.”
Salmone was silent. Studied him.
“Never,” he told Stack. “Not a shadow. Not a whisper. Ever. Not that I would. I wouldn’t have heard such a thing. Put it out of your mind, for Christ’s sake.”
Stack was burning in front of him.
“They’ll get the driver, Eddie. They’ll give it their attention. I will.”
“I’m sorry. I’m fucked up.”
“Look, tell me. What do you know about the relationship with Brookman? Was it violent?”
“I didn’t ask her. I couldn’t ask her. I wouldn’t have asked that, Sal. Why?”
“Oh, there was a kid—a couple of kids, actually—thought they seen him push her.”
Stack stared at him.
“I couldn’t put that together,” Salmone said. “Other people said they didn’t see that. There’s no case for that.”
“No?”
“Won’t stand up. But the guy did time.”
“What the fuck?” Stack said.
“Yeah. It was . . . like it was technical. But the guy did federal time.”
“What the fuck? The guy did federal time? This professor? He’s what? He’s some ‘I
was there’ writer?”
“He’s a big skinhead white guy. He was a fisherman.”
Stack endured a moment’s struggle for breath.
“Sal,” he said when he had regained control of his voice. “You gotta run this down. This could be a very bad guy, brother. Placed where he is. He could hurt a lot of kids. It sounds like these students saw something. I mean . . . you gotta run this down.”
“Eddie,” Salmone said, “rest assured, man. If this fucking guy put a hand on her, he’s going up. This is family to me. He’s our number one person of interest as of this time. If there’s more to find out, we’re gonna find it out.”
Salmone was thinking that he could hardly promise his friend Brookman’s head on a plate. Surely Eddie Stack must have a sense of how difficult, how nearly impossible, a conviction would be in the case as it seemed to stand.
“This guy,” Stack said, “this Brookman . . .” He broke off to use his inhaler.
“What if he walks away from this, Sal? He’s laughing. He’s . . . laughing.”
27
WHEN OFFICER BLANKENSHIP brought Salmone the bulletin from Boone announcing the apprehension of John Clammer, he immediately telephoned Shelby Magoffin’s dorm room. When she answered, he asked her to stay where she was. He also called Polhemus, to do what he could to control the press hordes that he suspected might be making their way to the campus.
When Salmone got to Shelby’s room, he was cross.
“Why didn’t you tell us your husband was obsessed with Maud’s piece in the Gazette?”
“’Cause he wasn’t. He mentioned it but he wasn’t bent out of shape or anything. The preacher down there must have been working on him. There’s this dude named Dr. Fumes likes his name in the paper. He’s been trying to work up a tabloid story about me and John.”
“You didn’t mention the protection order you had on him.”
“Look, the protection wasn’t even valid in this state. I put it in at the office here because I thought I might need it. I never thought he was a threat to Maud.”
“Well, he’s down in Kentucky confessing to Maud’s murder.”
Shell fell vertically on her sofa, landing on the seat of her pants.
“What?”
“The police down there are giving a press conference in half an hour.”
“I don’t believe it!” Shell said. “Hey, Lieutenant, John Clammer was either in jail or the hospital over that weekend. He never came around here. My mother checks up on him.”
About half an hour later the cable news station announced the cancellation of John Clammer’s press conference. He had been accounted for in custody on the night in question.
28
THE LAST CLASS OF the first semester took place after Maud’s death, before the Christmas holiday and the beginning of winter break. The meeting scheduled for that week was always a class out of time, a time for wrapping up. Sometimes it was merry, celebratory; sometimes, when people were overly busy and in a hurry, it was glum. After Maud, it was ten minutes of death in life, and if any words were spoken by anyone—by himself or any of the students—Brookman couldn’t remember. One kid, a boy, came up to him after the class with a dim procedural question. Brookman put him off, promised an e-mail he’d never send.
At the department office, the secretary, who disliked him for reasons he never understood, gave him a questionable finger-wave from a backroom. He managed not to tell her to go fuck herself.
On the street outside he noticed a tall man with a sallow fighter’s face and a gray crewcut looking at him with hard-eyed fascination. The man wore a tie, a dark red scarf and a blue overcoat. There was a shorter man with him who was also watching Brookman pass. They were not each other’s friends. They had no interest in their attractive surroundings or in the colorful characters who passed through the gate. Then it occurred to him that they were out-of-town policemen. He had seen at least one of them before but did not think it had been around the college. He passed people he knew, or who knew him, without recognition.
“You spent a lot of time at the office today,” Ellie told him when he got home after six. She looked good, but not quite as radiant as she had been during the first pregnancy—a bit pale and more tired. Otherwise, she was not showing her condition.
There was one odd thing, which was they were having more sex. Brookman found this strangely, maybe perversely, satisfying. Ellie went about indicating her inclination silently, several times a week. When she came, which was more frequently than usual, she let him know it, moaning, breathless. Sometimes her face was wet as though with grief. She had always gone to sleep quickly but slept lightly. Listening for grizzlies, he had teased her in the days before Maud—alert to the wolf stalking the fold. Sometimes now, afterward, he told her that he loved her. She said nothing back, though she would often touch him. Her touches encouraged him but made him feel sad.
As he registered every remonstration of Ellie’s, he watched Sophia with unsubtle caution for signs of resentment or withdrawal. Sophia watched him too, unconfiding, uncomfortable. She in turn was aware of his anxious observation. It was a delicate business to be conducted in such fearsome times, the guiding and nurturing of this wise, perceptive child at the cusp of adolescence. Sophia was both more and less sophisticated in certain ways than her contemporaries. Their bantering, fond relationship was a treasure of his life and he dreaded the loss of it.
During his hours in the office, he sometimes closed the curtains as he had when Maud visited. He ignored his e-mail and phone calls. Never answered his door. At times he drank, making sure that when he did, he had something to read. These were his two principal ways of controlling his guilt and grief. He had read Susanna Moodie’s memoir Roughing It in the Bush in the federal detention center in Homer. It was a popular book among some of his homesteading friends in the old Alaska and he had a copy in his office. He did not get far rereading it. So he turned to work like Anthony Powell’s. He read The Quiet American and Hemingway’s Men Without Women along with a history of the siege of Berlin. Often he drank, keeping strong mints handy.
“People are looking at me strangely,” he told his wife later that evening.
“Well, you’re a strange guy, eh? Aren’t you?”
Brookman went to check that Sophia was not in earshot. An afterthought. Then he went to pour himself a drink.
“Don’t you think people look at me strangely?” she asked him.
“They suspect I pushed her.”
Ellie failed to answer him at first.
“They once suspected you hit me,” she said. “You took a swing at me.”
“I’ve never hit you. And I never took a swing at you.”
“Oh, ya. Years ago. The second time I ducked. You fight like my brothers. On one foot.” After a moment she said, “Maybe they suspect me. Maybe they think we both hit her.” Brookman laughed and shuddered.
“I didn’t hit Maud, for Christ’s sake. You were right behind me.”
“Yes, I followed you out,” Ellie said. He sat down on a kitchen chair, watching her in profile as she did the washing up. Her face was very handsome, not without faults. Her long, fine nose turned up slightly at the tip. While courting her, quite in love, he had discovered that she was a woman who believed, however humbly, that her course in life was directed by God and that her choices must be made to honor Him. Naturally, she did not always tell the whole truth but she was not a good liar. “I followed you out,” she said truthfully. “Yes. The two of you.”
“I didn’t hit her,” Brookman said.
“I might have,” Ellie told him. “If she had turned toward my house.”
A picture came to his mind, as vivid as though he had seen it, of snow falling past Maud’s open blue eyes, flakes piling on their dead, still pupils. On her hair. At her throat. It did not incline him against Ellie. He had no clear idea how it made him feel.
“I’m going out.”
“Taking the car? Bring in oatmeal.” Ellie watched from t
he kitchen. Now she would not have the Christmas holiday she had been looking forward to—since being allowed a post-Mennonite Christmas—and her life was slowly changing from the inside out.
On the road Brookman drove with a defensive reticence that annoyed his fellow motorists. At the back of his mind was that some kind of unofficial police presence was on his trail. He had left the house without a destination.
29
SALMONE HAD COME TO THE house while Brookman was idly driving from one end of town to the other. Ellie had asked the detective to leave. Then she had telephoned him at the police station, gone in and made a brief statement describing what she had seen on the night of Maud’s death.
“What did he say when you asked him to leave?”
“Well,” Ellie said, “he didn’t like it. He said he might have to ask me more formally for a statement later.”
“Wonder what he meant by that.”
While Brookman was sorting his thoughts, Salmone called and declared that he would like to come over.
“Shall I come in instead?” Brookman asked.
“Why don’t you do that,” Salmone said.
Brookman went out in the cold rain and walked to the police station. As soon as he saw Salmone’s face he reflected on the interview Ellie must have provided. He was certain she had no idea how to favorably impress a sensitive, older, working-class detective.
He was right. Salmone was not happy with what Brookman’s wife had told him. Obviously, the lieutenant thought, she had believed what she’d said. But her loyalty and composure, rendered with imperious reserve, did not make him like either Brookman any better.
“Have a seat, sir,” Salmone said.
He let Brookman go through the details he recalled of the night in question without interrupting. He watched Brookman closely, letting him know he was being watched.
“Is it a fact, Professor, that you did time in a federal correctional institution?”
