Shadow of the Lions

by Christopher Swann

  To add to the general sense of excitement, the Game was one week away. Since mid-August, our JV and varsity football teams had been lumbering around campus in shoulder pads and cleats, looking for all the world like large stuffed dolls. The helmets, painted in Blackburne’s red and gold, were absurdly big. No one seeing those boys stumble to the dorms after practice could imagine them walking straight, much less running downfield. And yet their weariness would slough off when, limned in mud and sweat and occasionally blood, they crouched down in formation, leaping forward at the snap of the ball.

  For parents, who returned to campus for Parents’ Weekend and the November Blackburne–Manassas Prep game, a century-old contest known simply as “the Game,” football was a metaphor for watching their sons grow into men. Each time those boys left the field, clotted with mud and torn grass, they left a part of their boyhood behind them, and it was a bittersweet thing to see that disappear into the wet earth.

  It was a Saturday and I was on weekend duty, which meant I was responsible for any recreational activities, the checking out of equipment, locking up the gymnasium, and making sure students signed out before going off campus. It wasn’t too much trouble, but it kept me busy until late afternoon. The majority of the kids were either shooting basketballs in the gym or getting ready for a mixer at Chatham Hall. Laughter spread from the showers as boys scrutinized themselves in the mirrors and boasted about their prowess with girls. I walked the hallways, urging the boys to hurry up. Finally all my charges trooped out of the dorm and headed to the bus with much fanfare and whooping. Off duty until dinner, I couldn’t bring myself to face the stack of ungraded tests waiting in my apartment, and so I walked over to the infirmary, where Porter Deems sometimes hung out, sitting on the building’s wraparound porch and grading papers. As I walked across the Lawn past the chapel, shadows stretched long across the Hill as the sun dipped westward. The trees on the Lawn were just starting to go bare, their leaves beginning to blanket the grass below.

  I found Porter on the porch. Wearing sunglasses and sitting comfortably in a rocking chair, he was reading and sipping out of a mug. He looked up as I mounted the steps. “Kids gone?” he asked.

  “Just got them on the bus,” I said, and collapsed into another rocking chair. “I’ve been on duty since this morning.”

  “Want some tea?” Porter gestured at me with his mug.

  “My, how civilized. Are there scones, too?”

  “Nice. I offer you tea and you make fun of me.”

  “Okay, I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. Yes, I’d love some tea. Please.”

  “Bite me,” he said, but he got up and went inside, the screen door banging shut behind him, and he came back with a steaming mug.

  We sat on the porch and watched as the sun seemed to melt behind the mountains, spreading red and gold behind the darkening hills.

  “Where’d you get the tea?” I asked.

  “Betty lets me make tea in her kitchen sometimes,” Porter said. He took a sip.

  “Betty?” I drew a blank at first. “Wait, Mrs. Yowell? The nurse?” Betty Yowell was a formidable, matronly woman who had been the school nurse when I had been at Blackburne. She did not come across as the kind of person who would let someone like Porter make tea in her kitchen.

  “I just asked nicely,” Porter said. “Women love that shit. Butter up to Betty and she’s like a big teddy bear.”

  “Dude, she’s like sixty.”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter.” He whacked me on the back of the head with his paperback. “I’m talking about being fucking polite, is all.” He made to whack me again.

  “Okay, Jesus.” I swatted the book away. “What are you reading, anyway?”

  Frowning, he took a moment to decide I wasn’t worth smacking with the book anymore, and he held it up so I could see the cover. “The Killer Angels,” I read aloud. “I remember that.”

  “My U.S. History class finishes studying the Constitutional Convention next week. Thank God,” Porter added, laying the book down in his lap. “I’m sick of explaining the Bill of Rights. Thought I’d get a jump start on next semester.”

  “I read that when I was here,” I said. “The Killer Angels. My AP U.S. History teacher had us read it for class.”

  “Great fucking book,” Porter said. “Everything hinged on Gettysburg. We’ll get to it in January.”

  “Good time for it,” I said. “Weather’s lousy and everyone’s stuck inside. I remember Mr. Conkle reading Hamlet out loud to us in February on a real nasty day, with dark, heavy clouds and this moaning wind. Perfect setting for a ghost story.” I sipped some tea, welcoming the warmth of it. “I like the fall, though. It’s more mysterious, you know? More . . . melancholy, I guess, but beautiful at the same time.”

  “There’s nothing like fall, is there?” Porter said. “Kind of—”

  That was when we heard the gunshot, a loud, flat explosion. We both turned and looked east toward the river. From the ring of trees at the foot of the Hill, three quail burst out of hiding, their flight low and fast toward the infirmary. Fifty yards out, they cut to our right and vanished behind the dogwoods lining the driveway.

  Porter looked at me. “The hell was that?”

  “Nobody signed out to go shooting today,” I said. There was a sheet in the front office for students who wanted to go shoot in pairs at the skeet range on campus. It had been blank all day—I had checked before and after lunch. No one was supposed to have access to guns without signing them out from a locked cabinet in Stilwell Hall.

  “That was close by,” I added.

  Porter looked steadily at me, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, which shone in the dull red glare from the setting sun. Then he put his mug and his book down, and he stood. “We have to go see,” he said.

  PORTER’S CAR WAS AN older Honda Civic, and we drove down the rear-entrance road in a brittle silence. I was afraid to say anything out of an irrational belief that doing so would bring about some terrible disaster. Porter merely drove, concentrating on the road and glancing out at the trees that began to pass us by.

  When we reached the river and the bridge that spanned it, we were deep in the woods that encircled the school. Twilight had already settled on the forest floor. The last rays of sunlight touched the very tops of the poplars and oaks that stood by the river. Porter stopped the car just before rolling onto the bridge. I frowned. “What are you doing?” I asked. “The skeet range is over there, on the other side.”

  “Thought we’d check out the river first,” Porter said. “You can see a ways from both sides of the bridge. Maybe it’s a hunter, wandered onto school property.” He opened his door and got out, and shortly I followed.

  As we walked onto the bridge, I was conscious of the open space beneath us, the gurgling river twenty feet below. Porter looked downstream, and I crossed to the other side, leaned on the railing, and peered out into the gloom. Upriver, I could see a corner of the ancient outing cabin about fifty yards away at a bend in the river. The Outing Club sometimes camped there overnight. When I was a student, some of my classmates would sneak out to that cabin to smoke illegally, but now the cabin was as dark and cold as the forest around it. With a sudden passion, I realized how much I hated that forest, the circle of trees enclosing Blackburne like some enchanted wood from a medieval fairy tale. Those woods were haunted, even if only by memories. An image flitted across my mind like a sparrow crossing a room through open windows: Fritz running away from me into the trees, his white shirt gleaming in the shadows for a moment before he turned a corner and vanished forever.

  “Matthias,” Porter called, jarring me back. I crossed the bridge to his side and looked where he was pointing downstream. It took me a moment to see it. Something was lying on a large flat rock in the middle of the river, about a hundred yards away. It was too big to be a dog.

  “Hey!” I shouted, but the form did not move. Porter and I looked at each other for a heartbeat, and then we ran back to the end of the brid
ge and scrambled down the riverbank. We hurried through the darkening wood, branches slapping at our faces. I tripped over a root and fell to the ground, catching myself on the palms of my hands. I got up and lumbered on. Porter crashed through the underbrush just ahead. We lurched out of the trees and came upon the form sprawled on the rock only ten feet from shore. One arm was flung out, its hand trailing in the cold stream, and the feet were turned outward. I could just make out the shape of a rifle or shotgun lying half in the shallow water next to the body.

  “Go get help,” I said to Porter, and as he crashed back up through the trees toward the bridge and the car, I approached the still form. Everything I saw took on equal weight in my mind: the watch on the arm, the fingers of which dangled in the water; the red Blackburne sweatshirt; the untied shoelace; the jeans that were water-darkened up to the knees. Memories of CPR classes flashed up on my internal screen—keep calm, ask questions, raise the feet, keep warm. Then, as I splashed through the water and reached the body, I saw the puddle of blood, slick and black as ink in the failing light, spreading across the rock and dripping ever so slowly into the gurgling river.

  I SHIVERED IN THE flashing red-and-blue lights of the sheriff’s patrol car. Floodlights were trained on the river, white shafts cutting through the night that had descended like some monstrous shadow. Two people dressed in yellow slickers lifted a stretcher and carried the body, now zipped into a black body bag, out of the river.

  A deputy named Smalls stood nearby with an open notepad and pen. He was tall, maybe six foot three, hefty like a linebacker who’s gone off his training, with an open round face and a pug nose. His nightstick and revolver hung like afterthoughts around an ample waist. As if he knew I was watching him, Smalls glanced over at me, and then approached with a grave look on his face.

  “Mr. Glass?” Smalls asked. “I have to ask you some questions. You up to it?” I nodded, and Smalls flipped back a sheet of paper on his notepad.

  “You were the faculty member on duty this afternoon, that correct?” Smalls asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I was off duty when I heard the gunshot.”

  “What time was it when you heard the gunshot?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. About six, I think.”

  “And you were with another person when you heard the gunshot?”

  “Porter Deems. You already spoke with him.”

  “Yessir. And then you drove down to the river?”

  “Yes. Porter drove the car.”

  “Why did you go to the river?”

  I watched as one of the men in slickers slipped in the mud and nearly dropped the stretcher. “The shot seemed to have come from down this way. Then Porter stopped the car on the bridge, said we should look around. He thought . . .” I stopped, frowning. I couldn’t remember what he’d said.

  Deputy Smalls consulted another page on his notepad. “He thought maybe it was a hunter?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “A hunter. So we got out and looked over the railings.”

  “And who saw the body first?”

  The body. Just those words struck me—the finality of it. Not the person, but the body. My lips tasted like salt. “Porter did,” I said. “I called out, but . . . it . . . didn’t move.”

  “And you went down to see if you could help, that right?”

  I stared down at the river. The floodlight illuminated the flat rock where the body had lain. “Yes.”

  “Could you identify the victim?”

  I turned to look at him. “He blew his head off with a shotgun, Deputy. I’m not even sure it’s a he.” My voice had ratcheted up a few notches. I was on the verge of either sobbing aloud or screaming to the treetops.

  Deputy Smalls clicked the top of his ballpoint pen. He tilted his head slightly to the side, as if trying a different angle of view. “Why do you say he blew his own head off, Mr. Glass?” he asked.

  I stared at the deputy, who clicked his pen again, waiting patiently. “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I just assumed—”

  In my mind, I saw the body on the flat rock: the shattered wreck of a head above the mouth, the chin and lower lip flawless, except for a sliver of gore lying across the lower front teeth.

  I managed to turn to the side so I didn’t vomit on Deputy Smalls’s feet. A hand seemed to squeeze my gut like a child squeezes a balloon, and with an acid rush I emptied my stomach onto the bridge pavement. Dimly I realized that Deputy Smalls had crouched down beside me. When the retching stopped and I was able to spit, Smalls produced a handful of napkins. I feebly protested and then took them to wipe my mouth. “Sorry,” I managed.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It was an ugly thing, to see a body like that.” He stood up. “You feeling any better? I can get you some water if you like.”

  I ended up walking past the ambulance and police cars and off the bridge to sit on the ground, leaning back against an oak tree and taking tiny sips of water from a bottle Smalls brought me. I spat again, trying to get rid of the taste in my mouth. After a few moments, I cleared my throat. “Do you . . . Was it an accident, you think?”

  “That’s up to the county medical examiner,” Smalls said. “Right now, we’re just trying to ID the body.”

  I nodded. “You guys have always been helpful.” When Smalls looked quizzically at me, I shook my head. “I—sorry, it’s . . . I went here to school, and my old roommate, Fritz Davenport, he went missing. About ten years ago.” I took a deep breath, released. “You guys did everything you could, looking for him.”

  Smalls nodded. “I remember,” he said. “Lester Briggs was on that case.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I heard he just retired. It’s too bad. I wanted to call him up and thank him.”

  “I can pass that message along, if you like,” Smalls said. “I’ll see him this weekend.”

  “Please, thanks,” I said. This felt normal, having a mundane conversation with another adult, and I was afraid to end it and face what would come next. “Are you heading down to Florida?”

  Smalls frowned. “Florida? No, we’re going fishing up at Sherando Lakes,” he said. He seemed about to say more, when the radio clipped to his shoulder squawked with static and a voice. He stepped away and spoke into the radio, leaving me confused. The Sherando Lakes were just a few miles away. Sheriff Townsend had told me Deputy Briggs had moved to Florida after retirement. Why had he said that? Or had I misunderstood?

  Smalls returned, his face grim. “They think they’ve identified the victim, Mr. Glass. There’s a name written on the tag of his sweatshirt.” He glanced down at his open notepad. “Terence Jarrar,” he said. He looked up at me.

  The news sank into me like a cold blade. “He’s one of my students,” I said. “He . . . lives in my dorm.”

  “Your friend Mr. Deems just spoke with your associate head, Mr. Middleton,” Smalls was saying. “They’ve checked, and Terence Jarrar is unaccounted for—he’s not in his room or in study hall.”

  “I need to get back up to school,” I heard myself saying as if from far away.

  Smalls nodded. “Yessir. I’m sorry.”

  PORTER WAS SITTING MOTIONLESS behind the wheel of his car, which he had turned around so it sat at the end of the bridge, facing back toward the Hill. My breath visibly crystallized in the cold night air as I walked up to the passenger-side window, tapped on it, and then opened the door. “Sorry you had to wait,” I said. Porter didn’t respond as I got in and closed the door.

  “It’s Terence?” I asked.

  Porter nodded, still gazing out the windshield.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Porter sat still. “Yeah,” he said slowly. He rubbed his face with his hands.

  We sat there for a moment, saying nothing. A patrol car’s lights pulsed red and blue in the rear window, casting a dim, hellish light on the back of Porter’s head. Without another word, Porter started the car and we drove away, leaving the lights, and the body, behind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE


  News of the incident spread quickly. Travis Simmons was in Atlanta at a fund-raising event, so it was Ren Middleton who called the student body together that evening in the Fine Arts Center and informed them that Terence Jarrar had died in a shooting accident by the river that afternoon. Faculty advisors and Chaplain Joyner would be available for anyone who needed them. Terence’s parents had been called and would arrive shortly, and they would need our courtesy and sympathy. Afterward, the boys, blank faced, quit the auditorium and filed slowly back toward the dorms. An hour earlier, they had been joking about girls and Thanksgiving break and the Game. Now they were like old men leaving a funeral. I’d seen the same reaction in students the day after Fritz vanished.

  I had just stepped outside when Sam Hodges collared me. “We’re having a meeting in Ren’s office,” he said. His face, lit from below by the footlights lining the walkway, looked haggard, with dark shadows smudged beneath his eyes. I followed him up the brick walk toward Stilwell Hall, and the wind blew against us as we crossed the empty Lawn.

  By the time we arrived, Porter was already there, slouched in a chair and looking exhausted. Next to him was James Joyner, the school chaplain, a tall, freckled redhead with watery eyes. Ren sat behind his desk, gazing out the blackened window, the overhead light gleaming off his tanned, bald head. Porter looked stricken, and a little ill, and then I remembered with a sickening lurch that he was Terence’s advisor. Sam walked over to the desk and murmured something to Ren, who sat up in his chair.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, indicating with a wave and a nod that Sam and I should sit, and I sat down on a sofa by the door.