October

by Al Sarrantonio

  Steadman turned back to Kevin with his expressionless face and flat stare. "I trust we'll be serving better from now on. Unless, of course, the ghost of Theodore Michaels dominates that department, also."

  Before Kevin could react, Steadman walked away.

  "All hail the departing hero!" Henry Beardman said, raising his glass as Sidney Weiss entered the room.

  In toast, the others holding plastic cups raised them as Weiss blustered in, waving them aside. "Oh, stop!" he said. "I hate good-byes, and you all know that. So you have conspired to say good-bye in a grand way. You! Michaels!" he said, catching Kevin's eye. "Get me some wine!"

  To Kevin's surprise, and momentary annoyance, Dr. Weiss waited at the doorway for him to bring the wine. When Kevin reached the door, Weiss took him by the arm and steered him out into the hall. "We have to talk."

  They stopped a listening-ear's distance from the party, which continued. Sidney Weiss took the wine from Kevin and drank a finger of it. Then his eyes locked on Kevin's and stayed there.

  "You're going to have trouble," Weiss said. "Fillet isn't even going to wait until I'm on the plane."

  "But—"

  "Please listen." Weiss's voice was stern, but Kevin detected a trace of smile. "This is what Raymond will do. He will try to invalidate your assistant professorship, claiming the appointment was made after I had decided to leave. Which is perfectly true. His contention is that I had no right to appoint you, that the decision should have waited until the new chair—himself, of course—was installed. His argument has weight—and unfortunately, precedent. A similar situation arose in the History Department a few years ago."

  "What happened then?"

  "The new boy was kicked out, and the new chair put in his own man."

  "But—"

  "Let me finish, Michaels! We both know Fillet wants Charles Steadman to fill your spot permanently. It's no secret. Another of Fillet's arguments is that it would be unfair to remove Steadman, who has merely been keeping your seat warm during this mess, at this point. If Steadman wasn't such an incompetent toady, I might even agree with that. But there are subtle politics at work here. I think you'll be all right if you do what I say."

  "Which is?"

  "Resign your position."

  "What!"

  Weiss laughed. "I'm glad your reactions aren't dulled by this lousy wine! You have to resign. In fact, we're going to march back into my office in two minutes and announce that unhappy event. Charles Steadman will continue teaching your class. Then, in a week or two, you will be reinstated, in plenty of time to finish your first semester."

  Kevin looked perplexed.

  "Let me explain," Weiss said. "When you resign, another, older precedent will take place. I found a case in 1958 where an identical situation arose. That time, the president of the university stepped in to make the appointment. That's what John Groteman is going to do now. When Groteman says something, it usually sticks like glue. The trustees rarely balk at anything he does, because he brings in money."

  "Dr. Weiss, thank you."

  "For what?" Weiss grinned. "This is what most of my job is, Kevin. I should warn you, though, that Fillet will be out for your blood."

  "I can handle Fillet."

  "I hope so. You know he's wanted this job of mine for a long time. He gave your father trouble twenty years ago, and he doesn't forget anything. You realize"—Weiss laughed—"you'll be number one on Fillet's list after this!”

  “Quite a distinction."

  Weiss laughed again, taking Kevin by the arm. "Come on, let's have some more bad white wine and watch the shock on their faces when we announce your decision. The way I figure it, this will give you extra time to get reacquainted with New Polk."

  "I'd like that," Kevin said.

  They began to walk, then Weiss squeezed Kevin's arm, making him stop.

  "There's one thing I want to make sure you know before I leave," Weiss said seriously.

  "What's that?"

  "Your father's memory didn't get you this job, Kevin. Your talent did. The case you made for teaching Eileen Connel proved that to me."

  "Thank you."

  Weiss's hand continued to hold Kevin's arm. "I'm earnest about this. I don't want you to feel you have something to prove here at New Polk, that you have to clear your father's name. Ted Michaels was a great teacher before . . ." Weiss hesitated. "Before his trouble began. He helped me a lot when I was starting out. At one time, he was the best in his field. He was always haunted, but your mother was a wonderful calming influence on him. After he lost her, all that business from the past just took hold of him completely."

  Weiss sighed, as if making a decision. "Look, you don't know this, but your father tried to have Eileen Connel's books added to the syllabus here in the late sixties. He failed, because by then his thinking just wasn't very clear.

  "You've succeeded with that, Kevin, and you should consider it an honor to your father's memory. And frankly, I think you should let it stop there. I'm speaking as a friend, now. I'd hate to see you follow your father's path. I see the tendency there, and it bothers me. You're teaching Eileen Connel because she's a damned good novelist, not because she's privy to some secret knowledge denied the rest of us. You're going to have trouble enough keeping her books in the curriculum with Fillet fighting you."

  Weiss's face softened. "I want you to promise that if it's ever too much, or that working under Raymond Fillet is unbearable, you'll call me at Northwestern. Will you do that?"

  "I will."

  "Good." Weiss laughed. "And would you tell me one thing? Why do you like Johannes Brahms so much? Why not Beethoven?"

  Kevin smiled. "I read somewhere that Beethoven merely took on God, while Brahms took on something much harder, man."

  "I like that," Weiss said. "He certainly would have had a tough time with a man like Fillet."

  They began to walk, and as they came in sight of the office door, Weiss let Kevin's arm go and leaned close to his ear. "And keep an eye on Henry Beardman," he whispered, chuckling. "He may be an old souse—but he can still move pretty quick when he sees something he likes."

  Later, after the party in Sidney Weiss's office had ended, the shock of Kevin's announcement superseding Weiss's departure and causing all of the bad wine to be consumed, Kevin stood alone in his darkened office. The weak yellow illumination of the quadrangle lights barely lit the stained-glass window, making the colors glow like ghosts. The room was chillier than when he had left it. In the near dark, he fumbled with the cassette machine, rewound the tape in it, be-gan to replay the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms.

  He stood at the window. A lone female student—perhaps the same girl he had seen earlier in the evening—made her way across the quadrangle, using the senior walk. Her head was bowed against a cold breeze that had arisen. She held her books tight across her front, hugging herself. She looked cold. A few leaves pirouetted from the oaks, flashing bare red and brown in the lights before settling to the ground. The girl kicked at them unconsciously as she walked.

  Kevin suddenly wanted to hold her, to warm her. To warm himself.

  Up above, the sky was very black above the lights, very cold.

  The second movement of the symphony began, proceeded on its stately course. Kevin's hands, on the sill of the open window, grew coldly numb.

  The music reached the point of blossom, opened with aching, sad beauty. This was not false sentiment, but heartbreaking melancholy. Kevin felt an irredeemable sense of emptiness.

  Who in hell am I?

  Brahms knew autumn, knew of bittersweet inevitability.

  Suddenly, Kevin was crying. His body hitched with sobs. He brought his cold hands to his face, covered his eyes. A pain filled him like that Brahms must have known; he felt helpless in this beautiful season.

  I don't know who I am. None of us know who we are.

  He saw his father, in the end broken by madness and stroke, lost, his skin translucent, yellow-gray, paper thin, his eyes pleadin
g, unable even to lift his head from his pillow.

  "Kevin," his father had said on the edge of that great darkness. He had gripped Kevin's wrist with fingers sharp and hard as knives. "She knows, Kevin. She knows but she wouldn't tell me." The grip tightened; he strained to lift his head, his eyes widening, staring at something approaching. "Ask her!"

  And then he went over, and only the breath left him, an unanswered question frozen in his unseeing eyes.

  Oh, Father.

  Kevin saw Theodore Michaels as a young man, the great, wise eyes that even then had begun to fill with haunting. The strong hands held out to him. "Kevin, five years old, broke into a smile, running from the doorway of his father's office where he had waited to be noticed, over the tasseled, deep blue-and-red Persian rug, into the dim, dark-wooded, book-lined recesses of that sanctuary, into his father's arms.

  "Kevin!" his father shouted happily, hoisting him up into his lap, smelling of pipe tobacco and gray wool, swiveling his chair back to the desk—that great expanse of leather-edged blotter, scattered papers, a globe of the world on its oak base, the looming gray typewriter. The large hands held him tight around the middle, hugging him.

  "Can I use it now?" Kevin said eagerly, reaching out to the flat, round keys of the machine.

  "Yes!" his father said, rolling a fresh white sheet of paper into the platen. "Type away!"

  "And can I read all your books," Kevin asked, fingers poised over the keys, looking up into those eyes, that mirror of love, "and do everything you do? Can I know what you know?"

  The briefest cloud passed across his father's face, then he smiled and said, "Of course!"

  "Hurray!"

  Then his father lifted him so gently, rose and set him down, giving Kevin the swivel chair.

  And sometime later, when Kevin had finished his wild, incoherent lines of typing, he looked up to see his father standing at the window, hands behind his back, a tiny curl of new smoke hovering over the bowl of his pipe, staring out into the darkening world . . .

  Oh God . . .

  Kevin wept for himself, for his father, for his mother, whom he never knew, and for Lydia, and for the girl who had made her way across the quadrangle but would still suffer cold, wrapping herself with her books to fight it off, until she reached her room. He could not stop crying. Perhaps there would be no heat, and the blankets the girl covered herself with would not stem the cold that had climbed into her body. She would sit in the corner of her room on the floor alone, shivering, begging for help from someone who wouldn't listen. Perhaps the world would grow colder around her, cutting her off even more completely. The aloneness she felt would find equality in her chill, and would freeze her. She would cry ice, the tears of the dead. They would freeze to her cheeks, which had been beautiful, and which had been kissed by her own mother, and now were hard and smooth. Such was the whole world around her, each man in his corner shivering, waiting for ice, the inevitable, unstoppable end

  There was a loud click as the cassette player turned itself off.

  Kevin took his hands from his face. He gulped in a deep breath of air, shivered, wiped tears from his eyes. The symphony had ended, meaning he had been standing here for perhaps a half hour

  One of us knows

  He shivered again, straightening his body. He wiped the remaining shimmer of tears from his eyes. He had not cried like that for a long time. He felt embarrassed, as if someone had seen him and disapproved.

  Ask her . . .

  He took a long breath and looked out through the window.

  Yes.

  I'm back, Eileen.

  A leaf danced down outside the pane, mere inches away.

  He looked down; it had landed on the sill. As before, the chill breath outside blew it in, threatened to topple it from its perch. Kevin reached and grabbed it. It felt wet and full. He lifted it to his eyes, turning his head slightly to use the outside light, and studied the leaf.

  It was green and full and, up until a few moments ago, had been alive.

  4

  October 2nd

  Sleeping.

  He dreamed of apples. In his dream, a canopy of apple trees hung over him, a shroud of sweet, red fruit, bobbing, ripe, heavy spheres dancing to some hidden melody. Above, the sky was very black, but his orchard was suffused with light, as if the fruit itself glowed with fecundity, the trees, still green-leaved, healthy as madonnas.

  He rose from where he lay and tried to reach one of the apples to eat, but the fruit was too far above him. He was very hungry. He wore his Lincoln costume, his tall hat and beard, and he found that when he tried to remove the beard it would not come off. The hat was stuck tight to his head.

  Beneath the hat, he felt something move against his scalp, wet and uncomfortable. He struggled to remove the hat from his head. Above him, the apples danced to their own wind. He could almost hear their song: a high, thin keening like a choir of angels.

  The thing beneath his hat became more insistent. He felt it curling around his scalp, trying to find entrance. He became desperate, pulling feverishly at the hat.

  The apples continued to sway and dance and sing.

  He screamed, and suddenly the hat came free. He threw it away from himself; shivering, and felt desperately around his head. His hair was gone; he felt only scalp.

  The hat lay bottom side toward him. Something crawled from within it, a long, thin snake with legs, and as it left the hat, it broke into segments, and the segments went in groups to each tree and began to inch up them.

  Desperate, he removed his heavy coat and struck at the snakelike creatures as they came from the hat. But he was unable to damage them. They continued their movement to the trees. He looked up to see creatures inch along the tree branches, out onto the farthest, thinnest limbs, and crawl down, one to each apple. The apples still swayed, and the singing continued, until the creatures began to bore their way into the fruit, with a faint rasping sound.

  The apples jerked on their branches, and the angelic keening changed to a whispery scream. The apples turned black and began to fall from the trees. He screamed himself as the orchard shimmered away, and he was in a carnival in a wide cut field of corn at horrible night

  James Weston gasped and sat up. Disorientation assaulted him; for a moment he saw black sky and the bole of a nearby tree and felt something wet near his skin. Then the dream returned to mist in his head and the sky cleared to early morning, a purple-red dawn coming up in the east.

  Rusty panted beside him, raising his head questioningly.

  Weston sat still for a few moments, arms straight back, hands flat against the ground. He let the rising dawn, a beautiful shaded line of color, bleed the dream out of him.

  His breathing steadied. He felt at his face; there was, to his relief, no beard, only a day's stubble to shave off. There was no hat on his head. His hair was in place.

  "Okay, Rusty," he said. "Okay."

  Above, through the spreading arms of an apple tree, he saw the stars of Orion fading into morning light.

  The dog nuzzled at his arm, lay down, and put his head on his paw.

  A tiredness still in him, Weston lay back on the dewed grass. Quickly, he sat up. There was still a chill in him. He raised himself up on his long legs and stretched. His up-raised hand brushed the hard skin of a ripe apple and he recoiled, then relaxed. He laughed nervously.

  "Bad dream, Rusty," he said, perplexed at the continuing vividness of what he had experienced in sleep. Only now did he feel his feet back firmly on the earth, his mind back in this world.

  Rusty huffed, looked up, rested his head once more. Down the hillside, someone was approaching the sharp tree line of the orchard.

  Weston stretched again, brushed himself off Rusty sat on his haunches next to him, and James bent to pat the dog's head.

  As the stranger broke through the line of trees before him, Rusty gave a huff.

  The stranger came to an abrupt halt. "What the—"

  "Sorry if we startled you," Weston
said. "I'm afraid we spent the night in your orchard. I hope we weren't trespassing."

  The stranger came closer. Weston could make out a red plaid jacket, a weathered face under a beaten tweed cap, tan pants, heavy boots.

  "Actually," the stranger said gruffly, "you were trespassing." He eyes Weston solemnly. "Eat any apples?”

  “Yes . . ."

  The stranger turned his gaze on Rusty. "That dog eat any apples?"

  "Yes, he did."

  The stranger cleared his throat, spit to one side. "I guess you like apples, then." He stepped closer, held a hand out. "I'm Ben Meyer. You've been eating Meyer apples, the best goddamn apples in the Hudson Valley."

  Weston smiled, took Meyer's hand, shook it. "I'm James Weston, and this is Rusty."

  "Glad to meet you, Rusty," Meyer said. "You, too, Weston. You hungry for something other than apples?”

  “Why, yes—"

  "Then help me out up here, and we'll go down and get some breakfast."

  Without another word, Meyer tramped past them into the forest of trees.

  Following solemnly behind, James and Rusty watched Ben Meyer stop at each block of trees, reach up, yank one apple from its stem, taste it, throw it aside. He moved deftly, stepping around occasional stones and once over a stone fence into another section of the orchard.

  In twenty minutes they had covered the entire property. The sun had risen. The day would be cold and crisp. James noted that there were no clouds today coming from Vancouver; the air was clear and high.

  "Romes need a little more time. Good day for Ida Reds," Meyer said finally, succinctly.

  James and Rusty followed his brisk walk down the hillside, across a small front yard to a tidy farmhouse near a dirt road. The house had white siding and trim windows, a neat fence and tended garden. Nearby, autumned shade trees hung protectively over a lovers' swing. A stone walk curled up to the front porch. Next to the house stood a red barn.

  "Martha! Guests!" Meyer called as they entered.

  A small, tidy woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was neat as a porcelain doll, in her early seventies, aproned. A black terrier scooted past her and halted, its eyes going wide with surprise at the sight of Rusty. The terrier gave a high bark and chased Rusty back to the doorway, where the two dogs examined one another.