The Language Of Cannibals

the past fifteen years he had been devoting all his time, royalties, performance fees, and growing prestige to the problem of cleaning up America's polluted lakes, rivers, and landscapes.

At least a dozen of his songs had become classics; he had become a classic. The right wing, of course, still hated him almost as much as they hated Roosevelt, but this was perfectly understandable and only served to put Harry Peal in good company; along with Pete Seeger, who had made cleaning up the Hudson River his own personal crusade, Harry Peal had proved to be a durable thorn in the sides of the kinds of 'conservative' businessmen and factory owners who considered it their God-given right, if not their patriotic duty, to pour acid over the face of America in the pursuit of greater profits. Garth and I had been at the White House dinner where President Kevin Shannon presented Harry Peal with the Medal of Freedom for his work in leading the fight to clean up the environment. Harry Peal's was a ferocious integrity. If, to my mind, his politics and loyalties had always tended just a bit toward the mushy-minded, he was still, to my mind, a great American patriot who loved the land of his birth far more than most of his detractors, with their star-spangled invective.

Following Mary Tree's precise directions, I turned off Route 9W about ten miles north of Cairn and drove down a winding dirt road that led toward the river. Virtually at the end of the road, there was a mailbox with the name PEAL scrawled on it in red paint. I turned in the driveway, came to a stop beside a modest, freshly painted clapboard house with an enormous screened-in porch that rested on a ledge overlooking the Hudson, three hundred feet below.

As soon as I got out of the car, Harry Peal emerged from the house and hurried across a small expanse of lawn toward me. Age had bowed his back slightly, but had not reached his legs; although he was close to eighty years old, his gait was springy, lithe. He had a full head of white hair that nicely complemented his pale blue eyes; as he rushed to greet me, his face was wreathed in the simple smile that always made him look to me like Santa Claus on a diet. He was dressed in a variation of what I thought of as his 'uniform'-clothes he wore everywhere, whether singing for a group of migrant workers in a dusty field or on the stage of Carnegie Hall, eating a potluck supper with striking union workers or being honored with a state dinner at the White House. He wore baggy jeans, fine boots of supple Spanish leather, and a worn, faded flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up just past his elbows. A hand-carved wooden flute stuck out of his shirt pocket. As he reached me, I extended my hand; he shook it, then gripped both my shoulders.

'Mongo Frederickson,' Harry Peal said, his smile growing even broader. 'It's a pleasure to meet you.'

'And it's an honor to meet you, Mr. Peal.'

The old man with the heart and spirit of a child laughed loudly and shook me by the shoulders; pain shot down through my left arm, but I tried my best not to show it. 'Mr. Peal? Do I look like a banker? My name's Harry.'

'Okay, Harry,' I said, suppressing a sigh of relief when he finally released his grip on my shoulders. 'I appreciate your willingness to see me. I know you just got back from Europe, and you must be suffering from jet lag.'

He dismissed the suggestion with a wave of one liver-spotted hand. 'I've got no time for jet lag; I leave for Africa in the morning. Come on, we'll have something to eat on the porch.'

I followed him across the narrow expanse of lawn between the house and driveway, entered the porch through a screen door that he held open for me. A wooden table set flush against the screening had been covered with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. On the table were a basket of fruit, a wooden board displaying a variety of cheeses, a loaf of bread that smelled as if it had just come from the oven, a large earthenware jug, and two place settings. Harry Peal motioned for me to sit in the chair on his left, and I did. He poured me a glassful of an amber, sparkling liquid from the jug. It turned out to be hard-very hard-cider, tangy and aromatic, with a pleasant little kick.

'Good,' I said, raising the glass in salute. 'I assume you make it yourself?'

'Yep,' he said proudly, sitting down beside me and pouring himself a glass. 'I store it in an underground herb cellar at the side of the house. It sits there through the winter and spring and starts tasting pretty good about this time of year.' He pushed the loaf of bread and cheeseboard in front of me. 'Mary give you good directions?'

'Perfect,' I replied, helping myself to a piece of Gruyere. I tore off a chunk of bread, put the cheese and bread down on my plate, turned to face the other man. 'Harry, did she tell you why I wanted to see you?'

He sipped at his cider, then pointed to his left ear. 'My hearing isn't what it used to be, and I'm not sure I got all of it clear. She said it had something to do with the death of that nice FBI fellow who came to visit me.'

'Michael Burana. He was a friend of mine.'

Harry Peal shook his head. 'I didn't know about it until Mary told me. Drowned in the river, I think she said. That's a real tragedy. Like I said, I thought he was a real nice fellow. The FBI could use more nice fellows like him.'

'Harry,' I said carefully, watching his seamed face, 'did Mary tell you that I think Michael was murdered?'

He had raised a cheese-topped hunk of bread halfway to his mouth; now he put the bread down on the plate, looked at me with pale blue eyes that reflected shock and what I was certain was fear. He had gone pale. 'Murdered?'

'Yes. I'm certain somebody killed him.'

'Oh, boy,' he said, passing a hand that had begun to tremble across his forehead. He took the wooden flute from his pocket and began to absently roll it back and forth between his fingers. 'Boy, oh boy.'

I'd definitely struck a deep and responsive chord in Harry Peal, but I wasn't at all sure just what that chord was. To hear that a man he'd met and liked had been murdered had to be shocking, to a degree, but I read the man's reaction as considerably more than that. Still trembling, he abruptly rose, walked around the table, and stood at the screen, looking down at the river. He raised the flute to his lips, began to play. The tune was melancholy and haunting, and I recognized it from one of his many albums as a Russian folk song. The sense of fear radiating from the other man was even stronger now. Harry Peal was not a man easily frightened, and it suddenly struck me that he could be afraid for someone, or something, other than himself.

'Harry?'

The old man finished the tune, put the flute back into his shirt pocket, and turned to face me. He still looked deeply shaken. 'I'm sorry, Mongo,' he said quietly. 'I didn't mean to be rude. What you said kind of shook me up; when I get shook up, I just naturally take a dose of music to calm me down.'

'What is it, Harry? What's the matter?'

He shook his head. 'Mongo, I. . You're sure this FBI fellow was murdered?'

'In my own mind, yes. I have no doubt.'

'And you think this. . killing. . could have something to do with me?'

That was it, I thought. What Harry Peal feared was the possibility that he might be responsible for another man's death. 'It might have something to do with something you said to him when he came to visit you, Harry. I'm not sure.' I paused as he again took his flute from his pocket and began to play, then continued, raising my voice slightly so as to be heard above the soft, lilting, breathy notes issuing from the instrument. 'Michael Burana was killed sometime in the evening of the day he came to visit you, Harry, which was a week ago today. Mary told me he seemed very distracted when he came back from seeing you. She said he'd used the word unbelievable in describing the conversation he'd had with you, but he never told her what that conversation was about. I know it's none of my business, but I'd like you to tell me just what it was you talked about. It may have nothing at all to do with Michael's murder, but I'd like to hear about it so that I can try to judge.'

Harry Peal returned to the table, slumped in his chair, placed the flute on the table next to his plate, and absently rolled it back and forth beneath his palm. 'That FBI fellow and I had ourselves quite a chat,' he said after a time, in a soft voice. 'Back in the sixties, he used to spend a lot of time following me around, listening to my phone conversations, and opening my mail.'

'I know,' I replied evenly. I felt a rising impatience, but knew that I had to let the folksinger and peace activist tell his story in his own way, in his own time.

'He told me he was sick and tired of that kind of work- spying on people just because they don't like government policy, and say so. He told me he thought the FBI was wasting a lot of time, money, and manpower doing that sort of thing and that he'd prefer they just chase after crooks, spies, terrorists, and neo-Nazis. He also didn't care much for the Bureau's personnel policies, and he even suggested that sometimes it almost seemed like