Death of the Black-Haired Girl

41

ONE DAY THE FOLLOWING SPRING, Steve Brookman was walking on the campus for almost the last time when he happened to meet John Spofford and Mary Pick in front of the college library.

Spofford, Brookman had been happy to learn, had not been fired after all. The decision to keep him on, Brookman thought, had been wise and just and not at all what Brookman might have expected from the college. The three of them stood in front of the library, the center of covert observation by many of the passersby. They agreed that Amesbury was a great place to be in April; it beat England any day, in spite of everything. People said more or less the same thing to each other every spring. Brookman was more than ready to subscribe to these ritual notions, aware that he expected to be six thousand miles away by the following April. Mary Pick was as cool as ever. Brookman and Spofford could not conceal their embarrassment.

When they were all saying what Brookman and Spofford certainly hoped would be their ultimate goodbyes, Brookman gave him his hand and said, “Semper fi.”

“Yes,” Spofford answered. “Right.”

Immediately Brookman realized that the choice of words, in the circumstances, in the present company, was awkward. Spofford’s attempt to disappear the phrase was no less so. It was very painful.

As the two men looked around for some route of withdrawal, Steve, John and Mary saw that a schizophrenic man often seen on campus — a man whose presence Brookman had noticed repeatedly in the weeks before the death of Maud Stack — was standing a few feet away from them. He was staring in something like terror at the three people who were blocking his path. As they hastened to step out of his way, the man uttered a sound, an anguished, fearful groan that seemed to emerge from somewhere inside him, somewhere so deep as to be incorporeal.

Mary Pick looked stricken, though Brookman thought she must have seen him often before. “Are you all right, dear,” she said very sadly to the man.

He gave them a last terrified glance, turned around so that he was headed the opposite way and hurried off. The three stood silently for a while, watching him go.