Four Years from Home Read online

  “You aren’t by any chance headed that way, are you?” Fecklan asked when he had returned.

  I was fairly bored with this dead end, so I said “sure” and offered to take Harry’s painting with me and drop it off. I had already decided to cut any remaining classes Harry had that day. If they were anything like this one, there wasn’t any relevant information to be obtained from enduring their stupidity. I really needed to locate Beth and, not knowing her last name, her class schedule, or anything other than what she looked like in a blizzard-obscured photo, the best I could do was wander around until she found me.

  The day had warmed and, was fairly tolerable, except for the persistent cold wind blowing from the west and the sun glaring rudely off the snow. Since I had not yet figured out how to convince the sun that I was king of the universe, I decided to pick up a pair of sunglasses instead. Using Harry’s painting that Fecklan had wrapped in brown paper to protect it from the elements, I tacked my way back across the Drags to the college bookstore.

  The bookstore wasn’t fancy, but it was functional, and by functional I mean that it was staffed minimally, had no security cameras that I could see, and there were plenty of shelves to block the view of those who might object to me shoplifting the sunglasses. Back in my own college days I had been outraged by the price of textbooks and supplies, and had made the decision that they should all be dispersed more fairly to the students, starting with me of course. The savings to my parents who were footing the bill were enormous. Plus, I made a little income on the side selling stolen books to other students who thought they were getting a good deal on immaculately preserved used books. The habit continued after I graduated. Prices everywhere were outrageous. It only made good business sense.

  I was making my move for the glasses when something caught my eye — a book display with a little purple “Kenyon Authors” sign over it. I could only imagine the scope and breadth of the works by Kenyon’s finest: A History of Stones from Middle Path, The Art of Gravlery, and Polished versus Unpolished Stones — the Controversy for the Ages. Nonchalantly, I picked up the shades, snipped off the price tag with my pocketknife scissors — already open in my hand — and put the sunglasses on top of my head just where they would be if they actually belonged to me. That was the most important thing of any plan of deception — making it look like things were the way they were supposed to be so no one would suspect a thing.

  A quick look around told me I was clear, so I wandered over to the Kenyon authors rack. It wasn’t the collection of Middle Path geo-historical works I was expecting at all. It was a mildly interesting mix of works by professors, former professors, former students, and one book, A King in a Court of Fools, by H. Ryan. On the hardback’s cover was a painting of a guy dressed in fairly normal clothing, surrounded by people that looked like they had come from the backs of a deck of cards. A gold sticker affixed to the cover read: “Winner of the prestigious W.H. Smith first novel award and excerpted in the Kenyon Review.”

  “You really did okay with that one, Harry.” The voice from right behind me startled me, and I dropped the book expecting the cuffs any second. It was a sales clerk whose name tag said he was “Grabber.” Or, maybe that was his job in the bookstore — grabber of shoplifters. I panicked for a moment, but after going through my available options, selected the “play it cool” button, and bent down to pick up the book.

  “Hey, Grabber. How’s it going?”

  “Good, dude. It’s cool. Hey I heard that your book signing had been cancelled, that you were like going to be away or something. They said they weren’t sure you’d even be back.”

  “Really? Who’s they?” Harry had been a busy little beaver in his four years from home. I thought I was beginning to see why the school administrators were so upset by his disappearance. They had come all the way to Pittsburgh in the aftermath of a snowstorm to make sure we knew they were concerned and caring people. After all, they could have just called the local police and had them come over and break the news to us. I made a quick note to try and patch things up with the dean. It was probably more useful, though definitely less enjoyable, to have him on my side. But I stopped in mid-note and began erasing. What if they were playing their little game to make sure they got a cut of the proceeds from Harry’s book and Harry’s art? Why didn’t they mention that in Pittsburgh? I put a big red star next to the note about redecorating Soup Edwards’ office. That would be a priority.

  “Oh, I don’t know. That’s just what I heard people saying. We still have it scheduled for next week as far as I know. And I unloaded like two boxes of them and had to stack them up, so, dude, they’d better have it or I’ll be royally pissed.” Grabber ended his little explanation with a heh-heh kind of chuckle that I found annoying. If he was trying to say something funny, he should have let me do the laughing. He must have been raised on sitcom TV where they added the canned laughter to let you know when you were supposed to laugh because you were too stupid to know when they had said something hilarious. Sitcoms had long ago been banned from my kingdom.

  “Hey, would you mind if I took this?” I asked, showing him the copy of Harry’s book. I was going to take it anyway, but I thought I’d try asking first. “I’m having dinner with John Crowe Ransom, and I’d like to give him a signed copy.” Two parts fact, one part fiction, mix thoroughly, let stand for ten seconds, no one knows the difference.

  “Old John Crowe? Woah, dude. That’s heavy duty. Sure, be my guest. Woah. Yeah, I’ll just write it off as a lift. Heh-heh. Know what I mean?”

  Apparently Grabber had his own little business on the side. Convenient. Almost ingenious. My opinion of him rose slightly. “Thanks, I owe you one.” I pocketed the book, and Harry’s painting and I sailed off into the bounding main.

  The Chalmers Library was on the other side of Middle Path from Ransom Hall. It was a newer structure comparatively, but fit with the campus battleship theme and was weathering nicely in its own right. I walked up the few steps and entered. It had been a lot quieter outside where the white noise of the wind had made the snowy campus seem silent. The library was a typical gathering place for students, and even in hushed tones, their voices filled the building with a tangible energy. It reminded me of the one year at college that I actually thought I cared about education.

  I went over to the front desk and plopped the painting down beside me. “Hey,” I said matter-of-factly to the girl behind the counter.

  She looked up and smiled. “Hey, Harry. Are you looking for Beth?”

  “Eventually, but I’m actually here to drop this off.” I pointed to my ship’s torn sail. The brown paper wrapping had served its purpose and would soon find everlasting comfort in a landfill somewhere in Ohio.

  “I can take that up to the gallery if you want.” She started to work her way out from behind the desk but I stopped her. Getting help from a girl was out of the question.

  “Thanks, but I’ll do it. I want to take another look at the setup anyway.” I smiled and winked.

  Her laugh was nice, not the cackling-like-a-chicken laugh that a lot of women had. “I’m telling Beth that you were flirting with me, Harry Ryan. You’ll be in so much trouble.” What was it with all these girls wanting to tell Beth on me… Harry? The finger wagging didn’t work for me either. But she was a sweet kid. Reminded me of Kate. She was probably the brat in her family too. I’d have to find a phone soon and call home.

  “Mea Culpa, mea culpa,” I bowed outlandishly in mock apology. “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”

  She blushed.

  “Later,” I smiled, heading up the stairs to the gallery, following the signs, and searching my notes for some record of having ever taken lessons in how to be charming.

  The second floor gallery overlooked the entrance to the library and was basically a doughnut. I saw no sign saying “Chalmers Library, architects Dunkin’ Donuts,” but I was hopeful of finding a good cup of coffee; maybe a glazed donut, too.
I pictured Harry down below in his playpen and me bombing him from up there. Perfect. Too bad he hadn’t discovered Kenyon earlier. Glass-paneled railings protected the gallery goers from falling down into the donut hole. That ruined the overall ambiance, in my opinion. I would have preferred the occasional surprised screams of people plummeting downward. It would have provided a nice counterpoint to the otherwise sedate atmosphere. But that’s just me. All throughout the gallery there were freestanding works — the feverishly completed labors of the honors art students on display in an impressive array of crap. The outer walls of the gallery were filled with paintings — more crap. I spotted Harry’s work immediately. It was hard not to. You pretty much walked into it when you got to the top of the stairs. It was a series of seven paintings very much like the one I was holding. How they were “Along Middle Path” was beyond me. His work was a con. I was impressed.

  I leaned the painting up against the wall in the one open spot in Harry’s series. Each of the others was mounted on a swiveling pedestal, but pushed up against the rounded walls. There was an empty pedestal, but I decided that the art gallery people could do the final placement. I walked along Harry’s Middle Path — it still made no sense to me. I never could understand abstract painting. It was like an unclear idea that hadn’t quite formed, that needed to be rehashed or shifted around somehow, and it would make no sense until that happened; which was never for me with that kind of art.

  Something in the third work in the line made me stop short, though. I stood there staring blankly at the bottom corner of it as if my notebook had been torn from my hands and ripped to pieces. There were no pages to flip through, no battle plans to pick from, no guidance, no answers. I checked the bottom corners of the other paintings; sweat beginning to form on my forehead and palms. I felt sick; had to sit down. Finding a weird-looking chair among the displays, probably some poor sap’s idea of a work of art — I didn’t care — I collapsed into it, staring at Harry’s paintings.

  I released my death grip on the chair and my hand fell into my side jacket pocket… Harry’s book… Harry’s book with the photo of the painting on it. I grabbed the book and pulled it out, peering at the stupid painting on its cover. I flipped the book over. On the back was an old photo, a photo of Harry and me taken when he was six. He was smiling and holding over his head the leg brace that had just been removed by the doctors after a year of his wearing it. He had broken his leg and my Radio Flyer in a tragic wagon versus car accident. After three operations and a leg brace, he was finally victorious and free. I had never forgiven him for that. It was my perfect plan that had goaded him into riding the wagon down the sidewalk and across the alley in the first place. The sacrifice of my wagon was the price I was willing to pay, but he had survived and my plan had been ruined. Why had he picked that photo?

  The sticker — the W.H. Smith first novel award sticker — I picked at it with my thumbnail and peeled it off. Underneath, exactly like the signature on each painting in the “Along Middle Path” series, exactly like the one I had signed in the art room, and exactly like the forged signature on the Risk treaty with Harry so many years ago was my own “H. Ryan.”

  Chapter 9

  One of the things about my world, the world according to Tom, is that it is perfectly designed, perfectly ordered, and perfectly understandable to me. I know this because it was one of the first rules I wrote down in The Book of Tom, along with its obvious corollary — anything not so perfectly designed, perfectly ordered, and perfectly understandable to me becomes a search and destroy mission for Sergeant Saunders in a new episode of Combat! But I wasn’t sure even Vic Morrow could clean up this mess. I needed answers. I had to find Beth.

  Wandering outside, I crossed Middle Path, passing between Ransom Hall and another, much larger building that looked more like a castle than a school building. It only lacked a moat. That had to be Ascension Hall, one of the main classroom buildings. It carried a lot of student traffic that I avoided, heading instead toward the dining hall — Peirce. I needed a drink. Peirce Hall was a building with a square bell-less bell tower and windows that reminded me of a church. I was beginning to wonder if the suits that had put this place together had trouble finding architects who knew anything about what a school was supposed to look like.

  I walked inside into a slate floored room with winding stone steps up and down, an open door to the right — to the dining hall — and glass doors leading to a paneled room filled with comfy chairs. Inside, a student was banging away on a piano — something classical-sounding but, thankfully, partially muted by the closed doors. Classical music and poetry belonged in the same dumpster. I peeked into the dining hall. No one was there, so I wandered into the huge paneled and raftered room with polished wide-board wood floors. It was filled with wooden tables and benches, and had chandeliers lit just enough to give a warm, yellow glow to everything in the room. It had the same strong leather and polish smell of Mrs. Hoople’s, probably the only brand sold at the one and only grocery store in town. Sunlight filtered through a stained glass window behind a raised alcove where stood the head table of the high and mighty captains of the school, a fine galley for the pirates and crew, but not my style. I preferred Formica and plastic.

  In the quiet of the Peirce dining hall I became aware of a distant clicking noise back in the entry. I retreated and followed the sound up one flight of steps and down a short hallway to an open door. Standing in the doorway, my eyes adjusted to the dim interior lights of the windowless room. It was a pool hall — four tables and a counter with a rack of cues behind it. A lone white-haired old man was shooting straight pool on the back table.

  There is a certain code of conduct in a pool hall, a real pool hall anyway, like the ones Minnesota Fats and the Hustler played in, and I honored that code. I picked up one of the barstools positioned around the room for players and spectators, and sat down a respectful distance from him, not wanting to cramp his style.

  He ran fourteen balls before looking up at me. “How’s Mrs. Hoople?” he asked, racking them up and preparing to break again.

  I could feel my cheeks reddening. I was getting tired of people thinking I was Harry and was considering blowing the whole cover. It was like the stupid jerk had stolen my face and was flashing it all over Gambier like a credit card. Will that be Visa, MasterCard, or Tom?

  “She’s doing well.”

  “Good.” He broke and sunk the two ball. “What about you? I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s your story? You quit playing?”

  There was a flat, matter-of-factness to his voice that took any sting from what could have been pointed questions usually associated with the Parental Gestapo. He sounded like the type that just laid out the facts and let you draw your own conclusions. It was then I realized that of all the people I had run into, I liked the old coots best. They didn’t have time for the crap that everyone else was shoveling. They were making the most of what time they had left knowing that time is always short, and sometimes it runs out sooner than you expect. Too bad it takes young people so long to catch on.

  I couldn’t remember ever having seen Harry play pool. It wasn’t one of those things our family ever did — too expensive and not particularly wholesome. Of course, that didn’t stop me from hanging out at the Brunswick with my not-so-wholesome friends. I was more into the hanging out part, though. It wasn’t my kind of game — too hard to cheat at it without getting beat up and too easy to get beat up when everyone in the place was carrying a club.

  “I stink and I don’t like losing,” I replied, smirking.

  The old man laughed, causing him to lose his concentration and miss. “You never could beat old Potsy, could you? It used to piss you off mighty fierce.”

  Harry could never beat anybody at anything, but he also never got mad about it. I noticed a Coke machine and pulled some change from my pocket.

  Before I could get it into the coin slot, Potsy stopped me with his cue, tapping it on my chest. “You know the rules — playe
rs only. Gawkers get their Coke from the cafeteria.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t remember that part of the pool hall code from The Hustler, but who was I to argue with a man pointing a stick in my face?

  He smiled, “Aw, go ahead, just this once — for old times.”

  “Thanks, Potsy.” Coke in a glass bottle for only a dime — now that was my kind of drink. I took another long pull from the bottle and decided to start making a list of those who would be saved from the inevitable destruction of Ohioland with the sinking of the pirate ship, The Kenyon.

  Back to his game, Potsy sunk three quick shots without changing position. This guy was good.

  “How’s that girlfriend of yours?” He paused a second to remember her name, “Beth. She’s probably why you quit. Not enough time for nooky and pool, eh?”

  I laughed, spraying Coke all over my sleeve. “You bastard. I ought to whup your butt up and down the table for that.”

  Before I had even a second to consider regretting my comeback, Potsy slammed a dollar down on the table. “You’re on. Go get your stick. I’ll break.”

  My dollar was on the cushion beside his, my cue was chalked, my hands were powdered, and… I was going to lose. This wasn’t like a chessboard that I could just accidentally tip over and say “oops,” calling the match a draw. This was a five hundred pound slate table. This wasn’t a war game where I made all the rules. This was pool. Oh yeah. I was going to lose big time. At least it was only a dollar and not my Coke-soaked shirt that the old man was going to take from me.

  The old geezer broke, artfully sending two balls off the cushion and leaving the cue ball awkwardly on the other side of the pack. “There. I gave you a shot. Let’s see if you remember anything of what I taught you.”