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“That doesn’t mean you’ll make it,” said Riley.

“We’ll make it,” Hawthorne told him, trying to put absolute certainty into his voice.

After the others drifted away, Hawthorne told Tank that he wanted to talk to him. He had the idea of asking Tank to help him catch whoever had been leaving the bags of food.

“Homeboy,” said Tank, straddling a chair and folding his beefy hands on the table.

“How’ve you been?” asked Hawthorne. The dark wooden surface of the table was scarred with students’ names and initials and dates going back as far as the fifties.

Tank shrugged. Then he said, “Hey, I got something I got to show you.” He raised his hands, putting one on his forehead and the other on the back of his head against his short blond hair. He tilted his head toward Hawthorne and pushed both hands upward, squeezing his scalp and creating a number of furrows across the top that looked like rumble strips. Tank relaxed his hands, squeezed, then relaxed his hands again so the rumble strips came and went. “Cool, huh?” asked Tank.

“Cool,” said Hawthorne, and he considered the incredible desperation he must be feeling in order to imagine that Tank might make a suitable accomplice.

—

It was Hawthorne’s sense of his increasing isolation that led him to call Kate Sandler that evening.

“I wonder if I could come over,” he asked Kate around eight-thirty. He had spent a good half hour building up his nerve to call and he worried that his voice might show his nervousness. “I don’t have anything in particular to talk about. I’d just like the company.”

Kate hesitated and Hawthorne could imagine her thinking about her ex-husband and how her name had been linked with Hawthorne’s. He was sure she would say it was a bad idea.

“Come over anytime,” said Kate. “I’ll make some coffee.”

Kate lived in a small Cape Cod on a dirt road about three miles from the school. Hawthorne got there about nine. Her son, Todd, was just on his way to bed. He was a tall seven-year-old who shook hands with Hawthorne but looked at him a little distrustfully. Hawthorne remembered how the boy had been grilled by his father as to whether Kate had been seeing other men. And what would the boy say about Hawthorne?

The living room had a stone fireplace and gray plank paneling on one wall. A pile of books was heaped on the coffee table. Kate took Hawthorne into the kitchen. He sat at a round oak table and drank black coffee from a blue mug. At first he didn’t know what to say, then without making any conscious decision, he began telling her about the pictures of Ambrose Stark and the calls from the woman who purported to be Meg. He almost laughed at himself, so needy was he to tell another person about what had been happening. And he was afraid of Kate’s disbelief, that she would think he was crazy.

“But that’s terrible,” Kate kept saying. “I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this to yourself.”

He told her of the mutilated Stark painting that had stared down at him the night she had helped with Jessica. As he told her about the gifts of spoiled food, his coffee grew cold by his elbow. He found himself thinking of Kevin Krueger and what Krueger had said about the school’s malice and rancor.

“But who do you think’s doing it?” Kate sat across from him at the table, her dark hair framing her brow. She stared at his face as if she meant to draw it.

“For a while, I thought it was Chip Campbell. Then I thought it might be Roger Bennett or Herb Frankfurter. So many of them are angry at the changes. My friend Krueger says I should call the police. It’s so stupid—if I bring in the police, I’ll never get the school on my side. And why would the police believe me? That policeman from Brewster is still poking around because of the vandalism of Clifford’s office. Maybe I could talk to him. And certainly there’ll be an investigation into Clifford’s suicide. If I tell him, then this stuff about Ambrose Stark and the phone calls is bound to come out. People will think I’m nuts. I mean, I don’t have any witnesses. I’m the only one who’s seen that damn picture.”

“They want to force you to resign.”

“Yes.”

However, it was more than that. Hawthorne had wanted Bishop’s Hill to be his punishment—his great Sisyphean task—but he had wanted it to be a punishment under his control. He had meant to be prisoner and jailer both. Now he thought how ridiculous that had been. Not only was he being punished, he was worried that he would fail at keeping the school from going under. But of these thoughts he said nothing.

“You must tell the police,” Kate said. “Tell Chief Moulton. Surely, whoever is doing it is the same person who wrecked Clifford’s office.”

Kate urged him to tell some of the other faculty, those who seemed sympathetic—Alice Beech and Bill Dolittle, even Betty Sherman and Gene Strauss in admissions. And there were several more who were friendly, Kate was sure of it. Hawthorne listened but wasn’t convinced. Every time he heard a car pass he thought of his car in Kate’s driveway and how people would notice it.

It was past eleven when Hawthorne stood up to leave. Kate walked him to the door, then stood by as he put on his coat.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said. “That you trusted me that much.”

Glancing into her face, Hawthorne thought how pretty she looked. Her eyes seemed to shine as she watched him. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her cheek. She took his wrist, then turned his hand, kissing his palm. They stood like this for a moment. Gently, he pulled himself free.

“Let me,” she said, taking his hand again.

Once more Hawthorne gently pulled himself free. “When I touch your cheek, I feel my wife’s cheek,” he said. “When you kiss me, it’s Meg’s kiss that I feel.”

All at once Hawthorne turned and walked into the living room, standing with his back to Kate. She watched him without moving from the door.

“There’s something else I need to tell you about San Diego,” he began. “That psychologist, my former student, I knew her better than I said. Her name was Claire Sunderlin. I’d seen her a few times in Boston. Nothing had ever happened between us but it could have. We liked each other. We’d flirt. In San Diego, we’d had a good time during dinner, talking about Boston and other places. Afterward, listening to this jazz quartet, we were flirting again—making what-if kinds of jokes and laughing. Then we left the club and I walked her to my car. She was staying at a downtown hotel; it was only a couple of blocks. But I told her I would drive her. The car was in a parking lot and it was dark. We got in the front seat. We were still joking, then we began touching each other. I kissed her. We didn’t stop. We’d had a few drinks but I can’t even say I was drunk. It was like there was nothing outside my car, nothing outside in the world. She unzipped my pants. She made love to me with her mouth. My hands were buried in her hair and I held her over me. That’s what I was doing when Stanley was setting the fire.”

Eight

T
he chapel was full and the three golden chandeliers were blazing with light. Most of the faculty and staff were sitting in the two front rows, but Roger Bennett and Bill Dolittle stayed in the back in order to watch the doors and keep an eye on the students who occupied the pews behind their teachers. Also standing in back was Chief Moulton, the Brewster policeman. As headmaster, Hawthorne sat to the right of the altar, facing the school. On the other side of the altar was Harriet Bennett in her ecclesiastical robes. It was eight-thirty Thursday morning. Through the stained-glass windows, the November sun sent multicolored rays across the faces of faculty and students alike. Rosalind Langdon had just finished playing a Bach fugue on the organ and Tank Donoso, who lived in Shepherd, was climbing into the pulpit and looking somewhat truculently out at the chapel. As president of the student body he had been chosen to speak for the other students in Shepherd about their feelings for Evings, feelings that had probably ranged from the critical to the indifferent until death had increased Evings’s importance. Tank wore a dark blue suit that seemed too tight and he must have run his electric clippers across his scalp that morning, because he was nearly bald. Hawthorne glanced away and saw the door in back open. Frank LeBrun entered. He hesitated, then remained by the exit.

The service had begun shortly after eight with the Reverend Bennett talking about “Clifford Evings the man,” as she had called him. Her eulogy had been a mixture of homily and reminiscence but so generalized that she could have been talking about anybody. Hawthorne wondered what she truly thought, since she had urged him to dismiss Evings or at least force him into early retirement just the previous week. Instead she had spoken about the luminescence of his soul and the weight of his mortal burden. She said the light of his presence had been dimmed in this world only. Hawthorne imagined accusing her of hypocrisy, which he would never do. But possibly, now that Evings was dead, she could feel charity and even remorse. Possibly the prayers with which she concluded her remarks had been heartfelt.

Others had spoken. Skander told how he and Evings had both come to Bishop’s Hill exactly twenty years earlier. He had little to say beyond that numerical fact except that Evings had become a “fixture” and “one of those quiet people upon whom I had come to depend.” Tom Hastings, stuttering only a little, had spoken of a weekly chess game that he and Clifford played for years. Bill Dolittle had spoken of Evings’s love of books. But in none of these descriptions did Hawthorne see the frightened and desperate man he had come to know in the past two months. There was no mention of someone’s trashing his office only a week earlier or of Evings’s having taken his own life. And Hawthorne asked himself what the students thought of such a veneer of praise or if these pieties were just something they had come to expect.

Tank cleared his throat. “I can’t say that I knew Mr. Evings very well,” he began. He stuck a finger under the collar of his white shirt and pulled. “But he was certainly Shepherd’s main man. Like, he was in charge and he was a pretty good guy and if any of us wanted something, Mr. Evings was usually there to help or he could tell us who to see. And he never got angry. If someone broke something or if there was too much noise, he would come downstairs in his slippers and say, ‘Gentlemen, if you please.’ Then he would go back upstairs. And once when I was wrestling around with Charlie Penrose, he came downstairs and asked us to cool it. Then he sat with us until we’d settled down and asked if we wanted a cup of tea. I don’t know, it’s pretty lousy that he’s dead.”

Although Tank never described Evings as ineffectual, that was the idea that came across: Evings was a nice man who did as little as possible and let the students run Shepherd as they wished so long as they weren’t troublesome and there was no fuss. It seemed clear to Hawthorne and perhaps others that whatever discipline existed in Shepherd came from Tank Donoso and his dope slaps. Hawthorne noticed that several of the faculty were dozing, while a number of students were using the occasion to finish their homework. Scott McKinnon was staring up at the stained-glass image of Isaac and Abraham. Jessica Weaver seemed to be writing something. Then Hawthorne’s eyes came to rest on Kate just a few feet away in the front row. She wore a dark blue dress with a string of lapis lazuli beads around her neck. Her dark hair hung loose and the strip of white shone in the light of the morning sun. Her legs were crossed and as she watched Tank her right foot twitched nervously. Hawthorne thought how attractive she looked and of what he had told her on Tuesday night. His face burned at the memory. He hadn’t spoken to her since and he felt the awful vulnerability of someone who has at last revealed all his secrets. He felt certain she must despise him.

For another five minutes Tank ground on, trying to pick his words and avoid his dated rap-singer slang. He described how Evings had once helped him with an English paper, how he had introduced Evings to his parents. Hawthorne was touched by Tank’s efforts to achieve some level of decorum. A cloud briefly obscured the sun and the light shining through the windows faded, darkening the faces of the faculty and students. Then the light returned as Tank reached the end of his talk and hurried down the stairs out of the pulpit, obviously glad that his ordeal was over. Bobby Newland was waiting at the bottom. His round face expressed an eagerness that caught Hawthorne’s attention.

Bobby wore a dark suit and bright red tie. As soon as Tank was out of the way, he quickly climbed the steps. Then he stood with his hands gripping the lectern as he looked out at the audience with his head slightly tilted back so his goatee seemed aimed at the men and women in front of him. He didn’t speak. Hawthorne began to count the seconds. Slowly, he saw faculty and students alike stop what they were doing and look up. Frank LeBrun was sitting on the top step by the door with his elbows on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands.

After another minute Bobby began to speak, raising his voice and precisely articulating each word. “Clifford was my lover. We met nearly three years ago in Edgartown, where I was working in a restaurant. He brought me to Bishop’s Hill and had me hired as a psychological counselor. He was the kindest man I’ve ever known and you killed him.”

There was an immediate stirring. A few faculty members called out some words of protest. Hawthorne saw LeBrun get to his feet. The Reverend Bennett leaned forward and gasped.

“Whoever wrecked Clifford’s office as good as murdered him,” Bobby continued above the noise, “but that wasn’t the beginning. Ever since September people have been telling Clifford that he was about to be fired. These were men and women who pretended to be his friends. At first I thought it was true, that Dr. Hawthorne meant to get rid of Clifford as soon as possible. Isn’t that what you told me? You, Hastings and Bennett and Chip Campbell? And there were others. You know who you are. I even heard it from students. ‘Old Evings is about to be shit-canned,’ one boy told me. Why did you do it? He deserved better than to be stuck here at this shitheap, but this was the only place he had. You tormented him and terrified him till he couldn’t stand it anymore. Wrecking his office was the last straw. Can’t you see your crime? Can’t you see that you killed him?”