“It's not too complicated, really,” Commander Beecham continued. “When someone is suspected of a crime, they're indicted. That means a Grand Jury presents formal charges against them. Then they're arraigned. That means they have a chance to answer the charges. That's when the judge decides whether or not to hold the accused over for trial.
“If so, bail is determined, a trial is set, the evidence is presented, and the judge or jury determines if the accused is innocent or guilty. Then the judge, sometimes acting on the jury's recommendations, hands down the sentence.”
It sounded so easy, thought Albert. But he knew better.
“I see,” said Cindy. “That makes sense.”
“It doesn't work all the time,” said Albert. He surprised himself.
A spoonful of the Commander's tapioca stopped halfway to its destination. “No,” he said. The reprieve was brief and the tapioca was consigned to the abyss. “Not always.” He turned to Cindy. “Like anything else, the court system is run by human beings,” he said. “No better, no worse, no different than you and me. They make mistakes.”
Recent experience made Albert wonder if that was the exception or the rule.
Cindy cocked her head a little to one side, sifting the tidbits of information into the folds of her brain for future use.
“Going to watch the news, Commander?” said Basil Carmody. He pushed himself away from the table.
“I'll be in in a minute,” said the Commander. “Soon as I finish this.”
“Professor?”
“No!” said Albert, too sharply. He'd been thinking what he would have said had he been the Commander and Carmody had asked him to watch the news. “No,” he said, more quietly. He tried to smile. “I'm going to give Maylene her piano lesson.”
“Wonderful,” said Carmody under his breath. “Well. Which windbag will it be tonight, Commander?”
“How about the fellow with the bow-tie,” the Commander suggested. He got up from the table and tugged at his belt. “He's always good for a laugh.”
“Maylene, let's go wash your hands,” said Cindy. “The Professor's going to give you a lesson!”
Albert was alone for the moment. He'd go have his cigarette after the lesson. He could wait that long.
For a while he listened to the music of the household. Sarah and Alice Gould washing dishes, Cindy washing Maylene, the men in living room commenting on the news, and the newscaster talking in an incessant monotone.
Suddenly one sound was singled out from the cacophony with piercing clarity. The newscaster had just said his name.
At the same instant there was a knock at the screen door and Heather Proverb let herself in.
“Good evening, Professor,” she said then, noticing the blood had left his cheeks – in fact his whole head was as white as plaster of Paris. “Are you alright?”
“I . . . I'm ...”
Fortunately the Commander and Carmody were born in a previous generation. Seeing a lady at the door they were on their feet and huddled about her in an instant. The fact that she was young and pretty may have had something to do with the alacrity of their actions, but they would have done the same for any woman.
“Mrs. Grandy invited me over for tea and a chat,” she said. “Am I too early?”
That was all Albert heard. He sidled to the door of the living room as if he'd been sidling all his life and, poking one eye around the corner, focused on the TV. His own face was staring back at him, beardless.
Sarah joined the gathering in the front hall, increasing the volume fourfold. Unable to make out the voice behind the picture, he got closer to the television, sat down and listened with all his ears.
“ . . . has not been seen since the trial.
“Our investigators have learned that an odd couple of sorts has taken up residence in the apartment of the missing six-time Grammy Award-winning composer.” Video footage of Mrs. Gibson pushing the wheelchair-bound Jeremy Ash across the common in front of Albert's apartment building took the place of the album-jacket photo of Albert. “A young man with whom he shared a hospital room, and Althea Gibson, who identifies herself as the Professor's housekeeper.”
So that’s what she was. He'd have to ask Mrs. Bridges to give her some money for soap and light bulbs.
A man with a microphone took over the TV screen. “If they know where he is, they're not saying. Beyond that, one of the world's most acclaimed and eccentric musical geniuses seems to have vanished into thin air, and speculation as to what has become of him has made this otherwise quiet college town the focus of intense international attention. Back to you, Dan.”
“Thanks, Mick,” said Dan. “Sources close to the investigation report that the college, which is offering a substantial reward to anyone with information as to the whereabouts of its Pulitzer-Prize -winning composer, has hired a private detective to aid in the search.”
Despite the sultry eighty-degree evening, a shiver crept up Albert's spine in snow-covered boots. Suddenly he turned and was face-to-face with Basil Carmody.
How long had he been watching? Albert's physiology was not equipped to absorb multiple shocks. He broke out in a sweat and went instantly from sheet-white to beet red.
Basil, still picking at his teeth, was watching television. Albert tried to, too, but found it difficult to focus through watery eyes.
“It is believed the notoriously reclusive composer – who was recently the star witness at a murder trial involving members of the college's academic staff – may have gone into hiding to escape intense scrutiny in the aftermath of the ordeal.”
Miss Bjork hadn't been on the academic staff, thought Albert. But she'd been involved, right up to the moment she died in his arms.
“We'll have more on the story as it unfolds,” said Dan to a billion living rooms. “Now this word from Gas Attack.”
“Poor bugger,” said Carmody. “Those vultures will find him. You just watch. And when they do . . . “
“Who's that?” said the Commander, having satisfied the demands of chivalry in regard to Heather Proverb. He returned to his seat on the sofa. Carmody told him.
'And when they do,’ that's all Albert heard. The words stuffed his ears like pillows and yelled at one another in the concert hall of his brain.
“Oh, poor bugger is right,” the Commander agreed. “That story must have been all over the place up there, Professor – “
“Professor!” Carmody exclaimed.
Albert didn't hear. 'And when they do' . . . what then? If they could find him it was only a hop-skip and a jump to the large lady from the bus. Someone would tell Mrs. Grandy he hadn't really quit smoking.
Albert was really in trouble this time.
Carmody was looking wide-eyed at the Commander and pointing repeatedly at Albert, behind his back.
“What?” said the Commander, a little dully.
Carmody held a finger to his lips and mouthed the words: “It's him!” He pointed from the TV to Albert and back again a few times, clipping Albert's beard with imaginary scissors and mouthing Albert's name.
“No!” said the Commander. He leaned forward until Albert's profile was clearly in sight then, having convinced himself of the fact, leaned back and returned Carmody's wide-eyed gaze with a cherry on top.
“Good heavens,” he said aloud, adding in mime. “It is!”
Albert gave Maylene her piano lesson, but he was preoccupied by the man with the bow-tie and the supercilious grin. All he could hear, as Maylene plunked away, was 'The School has hired a private investigator to find him.'
He was so agitated, he went to his room without having a cigarette. While things seemed unusually animated below-stairs, he hardly noticed.
What would happen when the Investigator found him?
Chapter Six
The next morning Albert watched the world awake. He'd been in his nest on the hill since long before dawn. Smoking and thinking.
The silence was breathtaking. Not a breeze. No dog barked in the distan
ce. Even the crickets seemed to be straining to take it all in. Albert had never known the perfect absence of sound. The river of melody in his brain had always embroidered silence with music and, in so doing, crushed it beneath a symphonic heel. Now there was no music, and the silence rushed up at him from a well with velvet walls that denied so much as an echo. Eternal deep.
Slowly the silence dissolved on the ramparts of day. He could hear the smoke rise from the end of his cigarette. A heavy-footed aphid stomped clumsily along the fuzzy underside of a nearby leaf. A bird chirped a D-minor. Odd key for a bird.
One by one new sounds wove themselves into the symphony of waking. Doors opened and closed between beats. Cars started.
“Stanley, you get up and start your route!” yelled a woman somewhere down below. Her voice was muffled and distant, but clear nevertheless. To sit in its presence must be excruciating. “You shouldn't have taken that job if you weren't going to stick with it! If you think I'm going to deliver those papers, you'd better think again.” Pause. “Stanley.” Pause. “Stanley, are you listening to me!”
Albert had delivered papers once.Grit. The package that came in the mail said he could make over four dollars a week, part time. At that rate he could earn 19.95 in five weeks. Just enough to buy the harmonica he'd seen in the window of Favor's music store in Sanford.
He put a lot of miles on his bike that summer – like the boy in the advertisment – going from door to door, up and down the valley with the white and orange gunnysack bag over his shoulder. Nobody bought.
Perhaps he should have knocked.
Uncle Albert subscribed.
Probably just as well. Mother hated harmonicas.
Kitchen lights came on. Streetlights turned off.
Suddenly two police cars screamed up Croft Street, pulling into Marchant DuShane's driveway. Two officers got out of each car and went up on the porch. One of them knocked several times; he’d have sold Grit. No response. Again, harder. “Marchant!” said the knocker. “Marchant! This is Matt Harvey. Open up!”
If Marchant was hard to rouse, the rest of the neighborhood was not. Up and down the street, people poked their heads out of doors and windows like cuckoos on the hour. A steady murmur rose as they began to exchange observations at the bottom of their voices.
Matt Harvey was aware that the eyes of the world were upon him. He knocked again, this time with a black stick he carried in his belt. “March, I'll give you the count of five.”
“Three!” suggested someone across the street.
“One . . . “
The neighborhood stopped talking and held its breath.
“Two . . . “
Two of the policemen came to the back of the house and stationed themselves in such a way that they could see all sides of it. They had their hands on their holsters.
“Three . . . “
The comparison was inescapable; it was poor Tewksbury all over again. Surrounded. No where to go.
“Four . . . “
“Four's enough,” said the same someone across the street. Whoever it was, her patience was not equal to police work. “Bust it down!”
The admonition was not lost on the officer. “Five!” he said. He backed to the edge of the porch and tilted his shoulder toward the door. At that instant the door opened and a young man, presumably Marchant DuShane, presented himself in a bathrobe and slippers, holding a cup of something hot, and said something. Albert couldn't make out the words, but they were delivered in a friendly, if somewhat surprised tone.
“March,” said officer Harvey, returning his shoulder to its upright position. “I've got to take you in.”
“I made bail,” said Marchant; his insouciance melting away like a harlot's dainties. “I'm not going anywhere.”
“I've got my orders,” said the officer. He added something else, but his voice trailed off, so Albert couldn't make out what it was. By this time, in an effort to get his ears as close as possible to the action, Albert had stepped to the edge of his nest and was leaning on a branch that overhung a twenty-foot drop to a bed of brambles below.
“Why?” said Marchant.
Harvey shrugged. “Orders, March. You coming?”
“I (mumble, mumble) a choice, do I?” March replied. Albert filled in the mumbles with 'don't have'.
Harvey shrugged again. “I don't guess so,” he said.
Marchant scanned the neighborhood, his demeanor becoming more contemptuous as he did. “Mind if I shower, first?” he said. Then he raised his voice and gestured to the neighborhood. “Do you mind if I shower first?”
A number of doors and windows slammed shut.
“I can't let you do that,” said Harvey.
“Why not?”
“Well, people – you might . . . “
“I might what? Commit suicide?”
Harvey looked at the other deputy, then back to DuShane. “Happens sometimes,” he said, refraining with difficulty from adding, “your dad did.”
“How long have you known me, Matt?” said Marchant, his voice suffused with long-suffering.
“All my life,” said Harvey. “You know that.”
“Right,” said Marchant. “And you think I'm the kind of person who'd kill himself?”
“Well, I don't reckon, but . . . “
“I’m not my father. Give me ten minutes,” Marchant said. “You can come in and hold a gun on me in the shower, if you want.”
“Oh, go on,” said Harvey, exasperated. “We've got men all around the place.”
“Real men,” said Marchant with disdain. “Or just those clowns.” He toasted the officers in question with his coffee cup. “Ten minutes.” He slammed the door shut and the officers took a seat on the steps where Matt Harvey glanced frequently at his watch.
Albert had overextended himself. The lover's promise of earth slipped away beneath him, and left him hanging from the branch with his feet swinging in mid-air above the brambles below.
Albert had never swung above the brambles below.
Don't make any noise. That was the important thing. Even if he fell, it wasn't the thought of the impact that worried him, it was the noise. People would come running to see what had happened, and they'd see that it was he who had.
His arms stretched above him and seemed to be getting longer every second. His head was crammed deep into the sockets of his shoulders and his neck had disappeared altogether.
He hung silently, waiting to see if anyone had noticed. Looking down his nose at the world that slanted at him through his lop-sided glasses, he saw the police still waiting. They were relaxed now. The two on the porch talked quietly, though Matt Harvey glanced often at his watch. The two behind the house were tossing a stick back and forth.
Nobody saw Albert.
He had no instinct for this predicament. No atavistic animal grace betrayed itself in his flailings as he tried to swing his legs up and catch the branch. Time after time the soles of the Hush Puppies Cindy had bought him slid from the bark. She had said they were practical. They were not. His arms were getting tired and his chest hurt.
He put his remaining strength in one last upward thrust of his legs. This time they actually arched above the branch and on the downward swing the tassel of his left shoe caught in the crotch of a small branch.
Maybe they were practical after all. His Bean boots had no tassels. Neither did his sneakers. This is just the kind of thing that would have occurred to someone like Cindy.
Thus anchored, he pulled his other leg up and over the branch to which he clung for a moment to catch his breath. He reminded himself of a koala bear he'd seen once on a nature film. He replayed the video in his brain. The bear had backed down the branch paw over paw, leg over leg. Albert did the same. A moment later he dropped to earth as the dew that falleth from heaven, though with a thud. Not since Flanders had three feet been so hard won.
No one had seen. No one had heard.
“I didn't think you were going to make it there, for a moment.”
The voice was not Albert's. It had a southern accent. Someone had been watching. He straightened his glasses and turned to see before whose gaze he would forever be reminded of this moment.
The eyes were clear and dark. Penetrating. The brows beneath which they resided were thick and black. The face that hosted the combination was dark-complected and hadn't been shaved in a few days.
“I nearly fell,” said Albert.
The man smiled. “So I noticed.” He extended a hand and pulled Albert up the small lip of earth that separated his nest from the road. “I'd've helped.”
That was nice to know.
“Tanjore Trelawney,” said the man. He was powerfully built. A head and shoulders taller than Albert, which would make him, much taller than Albert.
“That's your name?” Albert asked. It was best to make sure now, and avoid future embarrassment. The man nodded. “Spell it,” said Albert, who had a hard time remembering names he couldn't spell – or those he could, for that matter.
Mr. Trelawney complied as if he had been asked to do so before. “What's yours?”
Albert said that people called him Professor.
“Good view from up here, Professor,” said Trelawney, “As long as it doesn't get burned down.” He nodded at the ground which was littered with the little cotton corpses. Albert always tore the filters off.
“I was just walking,” said Albert. “I heard police sirens, and . . . ” he pointed at DuShane's house below. “I came out here to look.”
Trelawney surveyed the neighborhood through the trees. “DuShane's,” he said.
“Yes,” said Albert. “Marchant . . . “
“Mm,” said Trelawney thoughtfully. While he was occupied with his thoughts, Albert studied him. He was wearing faded old blue jeans with paint stains on them and white Converse sneakers. Also old. A purplish plaid shirt over a white T-shirt and a small golden cross on a chain around his neck completed the outfit. That was it. No watch. No wallet. No socks.
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