“Oh, yes. It would that. You can’t think of any particular boy, or boys, any particular team you might suspect of such unsportsmanlike behavior?”
“No. I’ve never thought of it. I never want to.”
“Do you know Billy?”
“Yes. He, his family, belong to my church. St. Jude’s. I’ve told his parents how much I’d like to have Billy come to Cartwright. For academic reasons, of course.” The coach grinned. “I’m not allowed to recruit for the team.”
“Are you aware of anything else going on in his life that would cause someone to pin his ear to a tree?”
“No. Fine family. Great kid. Altar boy. I’ll stake my life that he doesn’t mess with drugs. Or run with a gang. Anything like that. Not Billy.”
“My sons say the same thing.”
The coach smiled. “The ‘Flynn-twin.’ It’s wonderful watching Randy and Todd work together on the basketball team. They don’t even need to look at each other. They always seem to know where each other is. And they cover each other beautifully!”
Flynn laughed with pleasure. “Sure. And I’ve heard Cartwright has won many points before opposing players learn there are two of ’em.”
“Right! At first they think it’s the same kid who’s everywhere at once!”
“But you can’t predict what one is going to do from what the other is doing.”
“Is that so? I would guess not.”
“Can you think of any other reason Billy would quit the wrestling team?”
“No . . .” McLaughlin hesitated. “I believe he has a perfect record, so far this season. He enjoys the sport. I know he even reads about it. The history of it. I know he works out, even on weekends.”
“But . . . ?”
“Nothing. I heard he had a little difficulty with his final match last Thursday. Well, he just wasn’t as aggressive as he usually is. I was told he drew back, seemed unwilling . . .”
“Did he know the other kid?”
“I don’t think so. They were wrestling Newton High School.”
“His final match of the day?”
“Yes.”
“Something got into him?”
“Something.”
“Has his bravery ever been in question?”
“Absolutely not. Not as far as wrestling is concerned. He goes at it like a tiger cub.”
“Well, I thank you, Coach McLaughlin.”
“Inspector Flynn, if you discover that whoever did this to Billy is connected in any way with this wrestling team or any other, please inform me. I will bring it before the coach’s association. Severest disciplinary measures will be taken.”
“Indeed I will,” Flynn sighed. “I will see severest disciplinary measures are taken.”
Before dinner, Flynn went into the den and returned a telephone call from Dr. Francine Huong.
“Inspector Flynn? Thanks for calling back. There was a message on my computer from a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley, that an item concerning Dr. Loveson had appeared on the Net. It’s really appalling. I can’t adequately describe it to you over the phone. I’ll make a hard copy of it and bring it to your office in the morning.”
“That won’t be necessary. How do I get there?”
“Get where?”
“To the right file.”
“Are you on the Net?”
“Elsbeth seems to have left the computer running.”
“Is Elsbeth your daughter?”
“My wife. Although she’ll be pleased you asked.”
“Elsbeth Flynn? The poet?”
“The same.”
“I adore her poetry. It is so . . . human.”
“Elsbeth has every reason to be human.”
Dr. Huong gave him the site address.
On Flynn’s computer screen there appeared a full figure of Professor Louis Loveson as a skinny old man in a wrinkled suit. Superimposed over his head was the face of Adolph Hitler. On top of all was a mortarboard.
“Nasty,” Flynn commented. “Also puerile.”
“You see what they’ve done,” Dr. Huong said. “They’ve taken text from his
Usable Past
and interspersed it with chiding text. Between every line runs a line supposedly reporting what simultaneously was occurring in the history of Woman—”
“As opposed to Man,” Flynn added.
“Jews. Africans. Asians. Throughout the text. There are reams of it.”
Flynn scrolled ahead.
Throughout the text were cartoons of Louis Loveson. He was running around and around in the center of a maze.
“Pointedly disjointed,” Flynn observed.
“How dastardly unfair,” Dr. Huong said. “Inspector Flynn,” she continued. “You may not have noticed. I am a woman. Also an Asian American.”
Reading, Flynn said, “I see.”
“Dr. Louis Loveson’s work is monumental. It will stand always. In fact, his work remains the most inclusive such work in the canon. It is perhaps the best fact-based work on historical cause and effect.” Her voice changed. “This is so unfair!”
“And we have no way of discovering who published this on the Net, do we?”
“None.”
“Do you spot anything, Dr. Huong, which might give you a clue as to who perpetrated this?”
“No. It could be anybody anywhere in the world. Possibly even someone not associated with a university.”
“But someone with a motive, surely?”
Dr. Huong said, “You surf the Net enough you’ll find tons of garbage motivated by nothing but sheer nastiness.”
“That’s true. But this was a lot of work.”
Dr. Huong said, “There was a day when published academic comment was required to have some imprimatur guaranteeing responsibility.”
“But wasn’t that considered stifling?” Flynn continued to scan the texts. “Didn’t that frequently lead, in fact, to exclusivity?”
She sighed into the phone. “Of course. But humans’ own sense of responsibility hasn’t matured enough to let them play fairly with these toys.”
“Possibly true,” said Flynn. “But can a sense of responsibility develop without freedom? Mustn’t one first see the need for responsibility?”
“My, my,” she said. “Yes. I suppose that’s what Louie Loveson would say. Still, this makes me bloody angry!”
“I gather from the way Dr. Loveson disdains the computer, he does not use one himself?”
“No. In his more humorous moments, he refers to the computer as a Ouija board.”
“So he will not see this?”
“Not unless someone sits down with him, puts his knees against his, and shows it to him. Surely, I won’t.”
“Your colleague in California, Dr. Huong, who notified you this garbage is on the Net . . . Could he or she possibly be the perpetrator? Perhaps using you as a way of getting Loveson to see this ordure?”
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve talked with her since I’ve read this. She’s as upset as I am. We’re discussing putting up a protest.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Thank you very much for showing me this, Dr. Huong. What I think is that the best answer to a rude noise may be silence.”
At dinner, Winny opened his gambit. “Da?”
“Yes, Winny?”
“We’d all like to talk to you about having a family television.”
“We have a family television.” Flynn touched his forkful of meatloaf to the catsup on the side of his plate. “It’s in our bedroom.”
“Highly restrictive,” Todd said.
Randy was not at table.
“You’re welcome to look at it anytime,” Elsbeth said.
“Sure,” Todd scoffed. “With you two in and out.”
“We mean a family television,” Winny said. “A big one. Perhaps in the living room? Facing the couch? Like other families have.”
“What would we do with the piano?” Flynn asked.
“We could put the television on top of the piano,” Winny said.
Flynn’s groan was drowned out by a jet airplane taking off from Logan Airport low over the house.
The family was used to such pauses in their conversation.
Finally, Elsbeth said, “Good. The piano as a television stand.”
“A big television,” Winny amended.
“Baby grand piano. Big television.” Elsbeth said, “Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach would be so glad we’ve discovered a new use for his well-tempered clavier.” She nodded her head in agreement. “He said the piano was more versatile than we knew.”
“We need a television in the kitchen, too,” Todd said. “So Mother can stay more in touch with the world.”
“Good!” Elsbeth exclaimed. “I have a new recipe for a broccoli pie I would have made already except it takes such a long time.”
“If we had all these televisions all over the house,” Flynn asked, “what would you look at on it that you’re not looking at now?”
“I could watch the daytime talk shows,” Elsbeth said. “Listen to vulgar people blame everyone else for their being so vulgar.”
Shrewdly, Winny answered, “The news.”
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “The Making News Shows. Offering only the news of which they have videotape.”
“Some of them are thoughtful,” Jenny said.
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “Extrapolatory News. If two horses fell in the mud two years ago and three horses fell in the mud last year, by the year 2075, 56,000 horses will fall in the mud.”
“Situation comedies,” Winny said. “All the kids in school talk about them and I don’t know what they’re talking about because I have to sit here every night at family dinner eating meatloaf, listening to Jenny scare me about algebra. And then do the dishes!”
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “Sitcoms, most of which seem to derive their comedy from sexual-identity confusion.”
“Laughter alleviates such pain,” Elsbeth said.
“There should be no pain in what we are,” countered Flynn. “Or, more precisely, in what others aren’t.”
“I rather like the mysteries,” Jenny put in.
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “Those dramas which insensitize us to violence while proving over and over and over that people of substance and accomplishment, too, have Achilles’ heels, and thus are no better than the rest of us.”
Todd said, “You’ve probably never even seen the late-night comics.”
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “Those who tar their superiors with a very thick brush indeed. Someone in the public eye slips on a throw rug and forever after is an object of derision concerning his clumsiness, inner-ear problems, drunkenness, or worse. Innuendo carried to the point where it shatters on the rock of poor taste.”
Todd slapped his hand on the table. “Sports!”
“Ah, yes,” answered Flynn. “An hour’s game played out over four hours interspersed with commercials making beer-drinking, snack-consuming and pill-taking seem the route to good health and great athleticism.”
“You like sports?” Elsbeth asked her children. “Then play sports. You’ll get more oxygen. Anyone want more meatloaf?”
“Da,” Todd insisted. “The Talmud, Old Testament, New Testament, and Koran are not all there is to life!”
“No,” agreed Flynn. “There are Eastern and Western ideas you haven’t encountered yet.”
Bravely, Winny asked, “Are we going to get a big television for the living room, or not?”
Answered Flynn: “Not.”
ELEVEN
The next morning, while the car was warming up, Flynn stood in the driveway, sniffing the air, looking at the partly cloudy sky, the birds on the tree branch no one had yet scared away by shooting one.
He watched a jet airplane fly low over the house on its way to somewhere Flynn was glad he was not going.
The roar of the jet engines did not scare the birds from the tree branch.
Carrying his sports/books bag under his arm like a football, Randy was the first to come out of the house and down the back steps.
“Well?” his father asked.
“Seeing he quit the wrestling team, Billy has to work in the family butcher shop every day after school. He went straight there from school. I talked to him a few minutes. I went in to buy a candy bar.”
“Did you ask him why he quit the wrestling team?”
“He said he was tired of wrestling.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No. And he gave me some nonsense about wanting to work to save up to buy a car.” Randy shrugged. “He’s only fourteen. He has a cut of some kind on his ear.”
“Yes.”
“He went home with his father shortly after the store closed at six. They rode in a car. I jogged.”
“Much healthier for you, I’m sure.”
“I guess they had supper. He left the house about sevenfifteen. He went to the cemetery. Jenny was waiting for him there.”
“I see.”
“They sat on a tombstone and talked for about an hour.”
“What did they say?”
“I didn’t listen.”
“You couldn’t hear them?”
“I didn’t listen!”
“All right.”
“They kissed hello. They kissed good-bye. Sitting on the tombstone together they held hands. Is that what you wanted to know?”