Dahlia Hadley on my left. Across from me is Dean Lynda, flanked by Kwame Kennerly on one side and an empty chair for Lem Carlyle on the other.
“The cops give you that black eye?” Kwame Kennerly inquires without any preamble, tipping his head away from me as though to get a better view. I wonder if this tale will ever go away.
“No.”
“So who did?”
“Somebody else,” I mutter, rudely. Truly my father’s son tonight.
Kwame is undeterred. “Not the cops? You sure?”
“I’m sure, Kwame. I was there when it happened.”
Irony gets me nowhere. “I heard you got arrested.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“They didn’t pull their guns on you?” Blinking furiously.
“Nobody pulled any guns.”
Kwame Kennerly strokes his small beard as he works out his next move. He is not to be put off by a little impudence. I may be the son of the late and hated Oliver Garland, but I am also a black man who might have been beaten by the cops; besides, the story is too juicy to ignore. Dean Lynda is listening with more than half an ear.
“But you did have some trouble with the police, right? White police?”
“It was all a misunderstanding,” I sigh. “I was mugged, I called in an alarm, and when they came they just thought I was the mugger instead of the muggee. But I showed them my university ID and then they apologized and let me go.”
“City police?”
“Campus police.”
“I knew it. That’s what they do.” He does not wait for my answer. “A black man in the middle of the campus, right? Two blocks from the law school, where you work. If you were white, there would never have been any misunderstanding. ”
I do not waste time wondering where Kwame got the details of my encounter, because getting the details is his job. I do, however, waste time arguing with him, even though his analysis is precisely correct. “I wasn’t walking, I was…” I hesitate and glance at my dean, but there is nowhere to go except forward. “I was climbing on the scaffolding outside the library. You can see why they were suspicious.”
“But on your own campus, right?” he persists, nodding his bearded head as if he sees it every day, which I suppose he does.
“Yes.”
“And the muggers were white. If the police got there and you were fighting with the muggers, they would still think you were the bad guy.”
“I guess they might.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” he exclaims to Lynda Wyatt, perhaps picking up on some earlier argument.
“I know, I know,” my dean says hastily.
“It’s his own campus, but it’s a white campus! See, this is the main thing the police are for in a town like this one-keeping us in our place.”
“Mmmm,” says Dean Lynda, eating fast.
“Black men are an endangered species in this country.” He pronounces it like a quote from an encyclopedia, then points his finger at me as the number-one exhibit. “No matter who their fathers are.”
The mashed potatoes are coming in our direction, and Kwame has to pause to spoon a healthy portion onto his plate. He adds some gravy from a small tureen, then leaps nimbly back onto the track.
“It’s open season on our young men!”
“I’m not so young,” I interrupt, struggling for a light tone.
“But you’re still lucky to be alive. No, I mean it. We all know what the police can do.” Still nodding with vigor. He turns back to Dean Lynda. “See what I mean?”
“Oh, yes. And we’re all very glad you weren’t hurt, Talcott.” She smiles with every sign of genuine concern. I realize that they are both thinking about a case in the neighboring all-white town of Canner’s Point two years ago, just about the time Kwame Kennerly arrived in Elm Harbor. A black teenager was shot to death by two police officers when he exited his stolen car with his hands in the air after a fifteen-minute chase ended with a crash into a convenience store.
But that was different, I want to say in the Judge’s voice, biting my tongue just in time, because the Judge would be mostly wrong.
“Everything worked out fine,” I tell Kwame instead, wishing he would stop.
“You should let me handle it.”
“No, thank you.”
“I mean, I could call the commissioner, okay? This kind of harassment happens to be an important issue right now. The mayor is very concerned.”
The last thing I need: some kind of official investigation. I cannot afford to become an issue. Not only would it be just the kind of thing that might tilt the scale back from Kimmer to Marc- See? We told you her husband is unstable! -but, worse, it might uncover much that I am not ready to reveal.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I think the commissioner should look into it,” Kwame says stubbornly.
“No, thank you,” I repeat, “and, besides, I told you, they were campus police, not city.”
“I know that. But the commissioner is in charge of both. It’s in the state law.”
Right. And the university has to obey the city zoning laws too, but it doesn’t when it doesn’t want to.
“I just want to put it behind me,” I tell Kwame, deliberately turning away to talk to the enchanting Dahlia Hadley. In his clumsy race-baiting, Kwame actually means well, and, worse, he is beginning to make sense. Shirley, at the far end of the table, notices the tension and frowns, for she loves controversy at her dinners as long as it does not get personal.
Dahlia seems more serene than the last time I saw her, perhaps because she and Marc have calculated that the little incident outside the library can only help his chances for the nomination. Marc comes from money-lots of money. One of his great-aunts was supposedly half a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller or something-the rumors vary-and a state park is named after his long-dead Uncle Edmund, whose charity was legendary. Marc has grown accustomed to getting what he wants.
“I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt,” Dahlia murmurs in her syrupy voice.
“Thanks.”
“You have to take care of yourself, Talcott. Your family needs you.”
“I know, I know.”
“They need you to defend a pawn.”
My eyes widen. There is an epiphany in every paranoid fantasy, a moment when the truth suddenly blazes whitely around you: yes, the world is united, and, yes, everybody is on the other side.
“What did you say?” My voice is tight, almost a gasp.
Dahlia cringes. “I… I said they need you to depend upon.”
I realize I am sweating. I cover my eyes for a moment. “Oh. Okay. Sorry. I guess… I guess I misheard you.”
“I guess you did.”
“I’m sorry, Dahlia.”
Dahlia draws back a few inches, as though I have made an indecent proposition. Her face remains hard and offended as she says sternly, “I think perhaps you need more rest than you are getting, Talcott.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… to raise my voice.”
“You seem tired. You should not be so swift to anger,” she adds helpfully, then turns to her left to chat with Norm Wyatt.
When I look up toward the far end of the table, my former friend Marc Hadley is glaring at me.
