Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 29

“Are you okay, Tal?” asks Shirley Branch, pecking me on the cheek as I step across the threshold of her condo. She peers sympathetically at the still-visible bruise under my eye. Outside, the wet New England winter wind carries on its annual December argument with those who prefer warmth. “I heard you almost got arrested. Let me have your coat. Where’s your wife?” One question stumbling over another, because Shirley possesses the kind of disordered brilliance that cannot keep up with itself.

I shake my head and hand Shirley my parka, answering the first question for about the tenth time in the past two days and the second for about the hundredth time in the past year. No, I was not almost arrested, I tell her; a minor misunderstanding, nothing more. And Kimmer could not attend the dinner party because the sitter came down with the flu, which is true enough, even though, had the sitter been well, Kimmer would have found some other excuse. Dinner with law school faculty is, for my wife, a little bit like being stretched on the rack, only without the health benefits. Kimmer, who at surprising moments decides she likes my company, suggested that I should stay home, but when I told her I thought that was a very good idea, she changed her mind, citing the very arguments that persuaded us to accept Shirley’s invitation to Saturday dinner in the first place: Shirley is the school’s first black female professor, and there is such a thing as solidarity, even in these fractured times. Shirley is my former student and research assistant, and there is such a thing as loyalty, even in these selfish times.

But I think the real reason Kimmer wanted at least one of us to go was in order to spy on Marc Hadley, who is also on the guest list. Kimmer and Marc have not been in the same room since they became contenders for the vacancy on the court of appeals, and my path and Marc’s have barely crossed at the law school, not least because I have spent so much time away. I think Kimmer, who is a good deal less intimidated by my colleagues than she thinks she is, decided that it is time to take his measure.

Until it turned out we had no sitter: then she sent me on alone.

“Have you seen Cinque?” Shirley asks hopefully in her gentle Mississippi accent-Cinque being the quite formidable name of the quite unformidable terrier which now and then accompanies her to her small office in violation of numerous university rules. “He got out somehow.”

“I’m afraid not,” I tell her.

“Are you really okay, Tal? I’m not sure you actually know everybody. You’ve met Reverend Young, right? No? Oh, you have? He’s my pastor. Your eye looks terrible. Are you sure you didn’t see Cinque out there? He’s not really a winter dog.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Shirley,” I murmur, and she shrugs and tries to smile.

I smile back as best I can. The pain in my ribs is less, but the stitches in my cheek itch terrifically. Stuart Land turns out to be away for a few days-in Washington, no less-so I have been unable to upbraid him for his efforts to sabotage Marc Hadley, if, indeed, Stuart is the one who is doing it. The stranger with the voluptuous voice has not called back with any further reassurances, but I no longer sense that I am being followed. Were things otherwise, I suppose I would have skipped the party.

I am among the last of the guests to arrive. Marc and Dahlia Hadley are already here, as are Lynda Wyatt and her sleepy husband, Norm, the architect. And crafty old Ben Montoya, Lynda’s strong right hand, whose wife, like mine, is substituting for a babysitter sick with flu. Lem Carlyle and his wife are expected a little later, after their daughter’s ballet recital. Four of the most powerful members of the faculty, plus me. Shirley was my student ten years ago in the first torts class I ever taught. She is three years away from a tenure vote, but she already knows whose good opinions matter. And she is sufficiently street-wise to understand that evaluations of her scholarship, no matter how we try to fight it, will always be influenced, at least a little, by how much the evaluators like her as a person.

Three guests have no direct university connections. My sometime counselor, Reverend Dr. Morris Young, is accompanied by his quiet wife, Martha, who is nearly as pudgy as he is-quiet, that is, outside of church, for her voice is the loudest, if not perhaps the best, in the choir, which sings all over the state. The other is rail-thin Kwame Kennerly, a shamelessly calculating politico with prematurely thinning hair and a magnificent goatee, along with a reputation as a rabble-rouser, implicated but never quite caught in several municipal scandals, who currently serves, as Kimmer likes to say, as the mayor’s special assistant in charge of keeping the minority community domesticated, although his job title reads “deputy chief of staff.” He is also, I realize as he slips his arm around her slim waist, Shirley’s boyfriend. And it occurs to me that Shirley is strengthening her ties not only with the most influential professors at the law school, but with two of the most influential figures in the city’s black community.

In short, she is fitting in; I, her ex-teacher, beam.

Kwame Kennerly, standing right behind Shirley with a wineglass in his hand, is quite rude as Shirley introduces me, presumably because he blames me for being my father’s son, an attitude I frequently encounter from activists of the left. (Those on the right are always in a great hurry to shake my hand, with as little reason.) I often see Kwame’s name in the Clarion, for he is one of those rising politicians who manage to be everyplace at once, but I have never met him. He is a long, sinewy man whose wide, blinking eyes disagree with you before you have opened your mouth. For this occasion, perhaps because Shirley lives on the water, he is sporting a navy blazer with brass buttons even though it is out of season, the sort of offense against which my mother used to rage. As if for balance, he wears a round hat of bright orange kente cloth. The riot of color-the hat, the blazer, his dark skin, his ebon beard-is likely to be of quite intimidating effect on the white liberals present. If he feels out of place he is determined not to let on.

Shirley Branch lives in a sprawling condominium complex fronting on Elm Harbor’s narrow and seaweed-clogged beach. Her one-story unit is not very large: a bedroom that apparently doubles as her study, a kitchen the size of a closet, a single bathroom, and a long area that does duty as both living room and dining room, although the dining table, which seats twelve, takes up half the space. For the same money (so she has told me more times than I can remember), she could have bought a three-bedroom townhouse on the other side of the complex, but she would not have had her spectacular view of the water. “I don’t need much space,” she likes to say, “because it’s only just me and Cinque.” Cinque, I should explain, is Shirley’s third dog of the same name, stretching all the way back into college: she makes sure we all know she selected the appellation long before Steven Spielberg made it famous.

To sit in Shirley’s condo, to gaze out the glass doors, across the balcony, to beach and smooth black water not fifty yards away, is almost to be transported back to Oak Bluffs.

Almost.

Shirley is a slim, flat-footed woman with a long, sad face and prominent teeth-what we used to call a horsey face when I was a child. Her eyes are a little bit too sincere, her flip hairdo is a little bit too pressed, her movements are a little bit too frenetic: even as a student, she had a tendency to overdo. Her work is principally about race, and she is determinedly, aggressively, almost palpably leftish. To hear Shirley tell it, no problem facing America or the world has any cause but white racism. Her mind is keen and energetic, she loves to write, but her scholarship lacks, I suppose, a certain subtlety, an attention to nuance, studied consideration of alternatives-she is, in a word, pigheaded, which is probably one reason we almost decided not to hire her. Marc Hadley led the opposition.

I wonder whether Shirley knows that.

I wander into the area that serves as both living room and dining room-sofa and loveseat at one end, glass-topped dining-room table at the other-and find Marc already holding forth, for he can no more resist an audience than the press can resist a scandal. Shirley shrugs in what might almost be apology as she hangs my coat in the crowded closet by the front door. Lynda Wyatt smiles merrily as I enter, raising her glass in ironic salute: she does try to like me, I must give her that. Marc’s greeting is so perfunctory that it is really a dismissal, but he is busy lecturing, into it now, tweedy arms pumping madly as he entertains the guests with his latest theory. Gregarious Dahlia does her best to make up for his rudeness, hugging me like a long-lost brother and asking after my family. Old Ben Montoya, scrawny yet still strong, puts a powerful hand on my shoulder and whispers that he heard I’d been arrested. I turn and glare, not at Ben, but at Shirley, who grins nervously and shrugs as if to say, It’s not my fault-I don’t start rumors, I just spread them.

My gaze finally settles on Marc himself, my wife’s rival, a man to whom I once felt reasonably close: Brother Hadley, as Dear Dana Worth likes to call him, or Young Marc, as the mischievous Theo Mountain prefers, for Marc possesses the kind of presence that inspires facetiousness. He smells, as always, of the rather pleasant raspberry tobacco he favors, for a battered old pipe is one of his many affectations. He pays no attention to the state’s recently enacted law forbidding smoking in the common areas of office buildings, having already decided for himself that it is unconstitutional, and nobody seems ready to challenge him, so the pipe travels with him everywhere around Oldie, although I notice he has not lit it at Shirley’s home. Marc is esteemed, quite properly, as one of the best brains on the faculty, a reputation, it seems, which justifies his failure to cut or even comb the gray-blond hair that falls past his ears, as well as his failure to shave more than once or twice a week, or to put on a tie, or to polish his shoes. He teaches jurisprudence and he teaches criminal law and he teaches learned seminars on the lives of the great judges and the coming death of law itself. Students are in awe of him. Most of his colleagues admire him. Some of us like him. Despite his ego, he is a kind man, always willing to give of his time and talent to those just starting out, and would be a considerable academic star but for the single failing I mentioned earlier: he simply does not write. His scholarly reputation rests not only on his single book- The Constitutional Mind, published almost twenty years ago-but on a single scintillating chapter of the book, Chapter Three, always written that way, capitalized, sometimes with no further citation: But Hadley’s Chapter Three has already refuted that argument, a sympathetic scholar might contend. In the famous Chapter Three, Marc presented what is commonly accepted as the best analysis ever of Benjamin Cardozo’s judicial style, and used it to present a critique of constitutional theory that remains in vogue today. Even Dana Worth, who despises Marc, concedes in her sober moments that she knows of no book as influential-no chapter as influential-written by a legal scholar in the past half-century. The book was a blistering attack on what has come to be called judicial activism, written by a professed liberal, but one who calls himself old-style, preferring what he calls the democratic liberalism of grass-roots organizing to the bureaucratic liberalism of litigation and legislation.

A dazzling thinker and fine teacher, my former friend Marc Hadley but I hope he remains a law professor.

At last I tune in Marc’s lecture. He is talking, as usual, too fast, but I capture the gist. “You see, if Griswold is correct-if decisions about birth control are to be made by women and their doctors-then marriage itself is obsolete. I mean constitutionally obsolete. Just look at the findings of history and anthropology and you will discover that Freud turns out to have been right all along. Defenders of traditional marriage, especially those who argue that the marital relationship is somehow natural, point out that it exists in some form in just about every culture we have ever discovered. But what does that prove? Only that every culture has faced the same problem. Marriage evolved to solve the problem of how society would cabin the human urge to reproduce, which is the strongest urge humans possess, except for the urge among the weak-minded to invent supernatural beings to worship because they’re so afraid of dying.” A chuckle to soften the blow he believes he has dealt. Then he resumes. “You see, marriage is, historically, about nothing but reproduction and economics-that is, children and money. Married couples bear and raise children. The marital unit earns and consumes and acquires property. That’s it. All the rest of marriage law is surplusage. But now, with the evolution of technology and of culture, reproduction is no longer a matter of marriage. Unmarried women reproduce and there is no social sanction. Married women decline to reproduce and there is no social sanction. And not only is there no social sanction-there is a constitutional right. So, you see, we have this area of law that is built entirely on a social understanding that no longer exists. Once severed from reproduction, marriage becomes irrational. The law of marriage, then, is not reasonably related to any legitimate state purpose, which is the fundamental standard that any statute must meet under the Constitution. And there we have it. Marriage law is unconstitutional.”

He stops and looks around the cramped room as though awaiting applause.

Everybody is quiet. Marc looks pleased, perhaps imagining he has so impressed us that we are too awestruck to answer. I cannot speak for anybody else, but I am silent because I am considering whether to ask my doctor for a hearing test: I do not believe I could possibly have heard all this nonsense right. Marc will never write any of this down, and this is where his block disserves him: it seems to have made him reckless, for the fact that nothing he says will be recorded in some permanent medium will allow him, if ever asked, to deny his words, to insist his argument was misinterpreted, or to claim to have been engaging in mere speculation. Marriage as unconstitutional! I wonder if the White House is privy to this mad theory, if it is one of the tales that Stuart has passed along-assuming that it is Stuart who is trying to sabotage him, for I have yet to track him down. I wonder how it would play in the press. (Not that I would ever talk to a reporter, but Marc has enemies. For instance, I could tell Dana Worth about Marc’s idea, and she would have no compunction about sharing it with as many journalists as she and Alison can find in their digital pocket planners.)

Marc continues.

“I do not say that private institutions, such as religious organizations, cannot, if they so choose, continue to perform their quaint ceremonies and announce to the faithful that this or that couple, of whatever description, is married in the sight of their particular God. But that is just an exercise of their basic religious freedom, guaranteed by the First Amendment. The point is that the state should not be involved in any way, whether by licensing these so-called marriages, or by granting particular state benefits to those who enter into them, or by purporting to decide in the place of these private institutions how and whether the marriages end. Griswold tells us that reproduction is not the state’s business. Therefore, marriage is not the state’s business.”

Ben Montoya, the great liberal, winks at me, a bemused grin on his face. He is Marc’s occasional sparring partner, for they are very much on opposite sides of such decisions as Roe v. Wade. (Marc would say he is personally pro-choice but believes the state has the authority to disagree.) Tonight, however, Ben does not argue with Marc. Neither does Lynda Wyatt, although she is standing right next to him. Lynda in her day has taught both family law and constitutional law and thus might be able to correct a few of Marc’s errors, but she is looking down at the sea-green carpet. I have never understood this effect that Marc has on people. Kwame Kennerly, who has given much of his considerable energy to encouraging marriage among the young African American men of the inner city, most of whom seem to have forgotten how it is done, looks furious. On the other hand, he remains a relative newcomer to the town of Elm Harbor, still building his political base, and is not quite ready to challenge a representative of the hated and envied university, especially one who raises so much money for Democratic candidates. Dr. Young looks troubled, but not intimidated. He shakes his head a few times, his fleshy lips pursed in disapproval. He does not say a word. I have the impression that he is biding his time, letting Marc punch himself out: the rope-a-dope. As for me, well, I would not dream of opening my mouth; so I content myself with wishing Dana were here to shut Marc up. Norm Wyatt alone has the impertinence to roll his eyes in open disbelief, but he feels about the law faculty roughly the same way that Kimmer does.

“Now, if you apply my theory to same-sex marriage-” Marc hurries on, but Shirley wisely chooses this moment to announce that dinner is served.

Marc’s audience happily deserts him, to his apparent puzzlement, because his hands are still waving even when most of the guests have turned toward the table. Shirley points out our various seats. Before sitting down, I take a moment to glance out the sliding glass doors, past her balcony, down to the beach and the gently throbbing surf, and I wonder whether Kimmer and I, too, should have sacrificed space for this gorgeous proximity.

I am seated in the middle of one of the long sides of the table, squeezed between Dr. Young on my right and 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.

Through most of the meal, almost everybody around me seems to find somebody else far more interesting to talk to. Lynda Wyatt, whose conceit is that she can charm anybody into anything, seems to have her hands full with Kwame Kennerly, and Dahlia Hadley, who has not said another word to me since I raised my voice to her, is arguing historic preservation with Lynda’s husband, Norm. (She’s pro-, he’s anti-.) Marc Hadley is instructing Shirley on the finer points of separation of church and state, about which she has written and he has not. Lemaster and Julia Carlyle, both slim and pert, finally arrived, their daughter’s recital having gone well; seated on opposite sides of the table, the two of them have eyes, as usual, mainly for each other. I have tried to say a word to Lem, usually a sparkling conversationalist, but he has responded with little more than grunts, as though he cannot bear talking to me; and I wonder anew whether his changed attitude is my imagination, or whether my stock around the law school has really fallen so far, so fast.

But Dr. Young, who earlier prayed over the food with no pretense of ecumenism, has decided to bend my ear about the murder of Freeman Bishop, which has not come up in our counseling sessions. He has been relating a rather long story about a lynching that his granddaddy told him about, back in Georgia around about nineteen-ought-six, in which a black preacher was burned with a hot coal all over his arms and legs and then shot in the back of the head when he refused to talk about his efforts to organize the mill workers.

“You see,” says Dr. Young, rolling into his theme, “Satan never changes. That is his great weakness. That is where the believer has the advantage over him, praise God. Satan is a creature of habit. He is clever but he is not intelligent. Satan is always the same, and his subjects, those souls who are lost to him, always behave the same. If Hitler marched the Jews off to the extermination camps, you can be sure that some other wicked leader, in times out of mind, slaughtered the innocents because they were different. You see leaders today, all over the world, doing it again! Black, white, yellow, brown, people of every color slaughtering people of every color! Because Satan is always the same. Always! Satan is stupid. Clever, you see, but not intelligent, praise God. This is God’s gift to us, requiring Satan to remain stupid. Why is Satan stupid? So that, if we are alert, we can recognize him. By his signs shall we know him! For Satan, stupid Satan, always attacks us in the same ways. If the old methods fail, he can think of nothing new, praise God. So he just goes on to attack somebody else. He attacks us with sexual desire and other temptations that distract the body. He attacks us with drink and drugs and other temptations that addle the brain. He attacks us with racial hatred and love of money and other temptations that distort the soul.”

Dr. Young’s sermon is louder now, and the whole table is paying attention, even Marc, who cannot stand to have the attention of a room focused on anybody but himself.

“You see, then, what Satan does. He attacks the body. He attacks the brain. He attacks the soul. Body, mind, and soul-those are the only parts of the human being that Satan understands how to attack, praise God. If you guard them from Satan, you are safe. If you guard your body, you are guarding the temple of the Lord, for you are made in God’s image. If you guard your mind, you are guarding the toolhouse of the Lord, for God works his will here on earth through mortal human beings. And if you guard your spirit, you are guarding the storehouse of the Lord, for God fills our souls with his power to help us to do his work on earth.”

Marc Hadley, author of the famous Chapter Three, can stand this no longer. He interrupts.

“Morris…” he begins.

“Dr. Young is fine,” says Dr. Young equably.

“Dr. Young”-it burns Marc to address him this way when his doctorate is surely in divinity, probably from some unknown seminary-“first, let me tell you that my wife and I are freethinkers. We are religious skeptics,” he translates unnecessarily. Most of the table is watching Marc, but I am watching Dahlia, whose small mouth curls in distaste just before she turns to gaze out the window toward the surf. I wonder whether she is mad at her husband for entering into the argument in the first place, or for his use of we, while neglecting to mention that she is a very serious Roman Catholic who takes her son to mass every Sunday. “We are not atheists,” Marc presses on, “because there is no proof that God does not exist, but we are skeptical of the truth claims of all religions, because there is no proof that God does. Or that Satan does. Second-”

“Well, let us deal with the first first.” The pastor smiles. “You know, a very great thinker named Martin Buber once wrote that there are no atheists, because the atheist has to struggle with God every day. Maybe that is why the Scripture tells us, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.’”

“I don’t remember that in Buber,” says Marc Hadley, who hates to be told anything he does not already know.

“It was in Between Man and Man, ” Lemaster Carlyle, the onetime divinity student, intervenes quietly, taking the whole table by surprise. “A marvelous book. People who have read I and Thou and think they know Buber have not even scratched the surface.” A dig at poor Marc, something of an insider’s sport around the law school.

Dr. Young points a gray finger at Lem. “You are right, Professor Carlyle, but you are also wrong. The important question is not whether or not you have read Buber, nor is the important question which Buber you have read. The important question is whether you know what the stakes are. When I was at Harvard getting my doctorate, I had a philosophy professor, an atheist, who used to remind us what religion was all about: ‘It is not your mind that God wants,’ he used to say, ‘but your soul.’ Because God invented the human mind, but enters that mind through the human heart. My professor used to say, ‘God does not want you to read the Bible and say, What a beautiful book! He wants you to read the Bible and say, Hallelujah, I believe! ’”

I enjoy watching Marc’s jaw drop, which does not happen often, but his mouth has been hanging open since the Reverend strung together the words doctorate and Harvard. Morris Young has depths that Marc Hadley, in his genteel liberal racism, never imagined.

Meanwhile, the preacher’s pocked face arranges itself into a smile of reminiscence. “This was back in the fifties, of course, a time when philosophers, even atheist philosophers, were expected to know their Bible. After all, the Bible has been by far the most influential book in Western history, praise God, probably in the history of the whole world. Well, how can anybody pretend to understand or to explain that world without understanding the book that built it? But when you come to know the Bible, you come to know God. So the atheist who has truly tried to understand the world will already be closer to God than many Christians, because he will know God’s word. The Lord creates many paths to his house, and he will, in the fullness of time, gather in even many of those who believe that they do not believe; for, in struggling with God, they are halfway to belief already.”

“Amen, Reverend,” says Kwame Kennerly, Shirley beams at him.

Meanwhile, Dahlia Hadley is taking her turn. “But isn’t the atheist at risk? He might come to God, but, then again, he might not.” I glance up just in time to see her smile prettily at Marc, but the surging anger is there, just below the surface of her girlish face, for those who care to look.

Dr. Young notices her fury. He notices everything. He nods his heavy head. “That is true, my dear, that is true, that is true.” His rolling voice has developed a musical lilt. “The Lord opens the door to Heaven to the most miserable sinner, but the sinner still has to step through it. And the human mind, that glorious creation, has a way of throwing up obstacles. Oh, yes. The Lord holds the door open and the mind says, ‘That’s not the Lord!’ or ‘That’s not the door!’ or ‘I’d rather store up treasures on earth!’ Those are the counsels of Satan, who is always the same, remember, praise God, clever but not intelligent. Many a man would rather listen to Satan’s counsels, would rather win what the sinful world gives grudgingly than accept what God offers freely. And we all know what the Gospel says about such men: ‘They have their reward.’”

Marc Hadley wants to interrupt again, but Shirley Branch, sitting next to him at the head of the table, has the temerity to put a hand on his arm to make him shush.

Ben Montoya speaks up instead: “Some people don’t happen to share your religious beliefs, Reverend,” he declares, rudely but correctly. “Have you thought about their rights?”

Dr. Morris Young smiles down the table at him. “Oh, Professor Montoya, I have no concern for such matters. Rights are a thing of men. God is a God of love. You do not love your neighbor by giving your neighbor a right. You give the poor man or the black man a right and you feel you have done your duty to him. You may even feel that he now owes you a debt of gratitude. But if you had loved him to begin with, the question of right would never have arisen.”

Lem Carlyle again intervenes gently, seeking common ground, as a future dean must. “But Christianity teaches that human beings are fallen. That we are sinful by nature. So Christianity justifies the state itself as ordained by God to keep order among these fallen creatures. Isn’t that why we have rights, in Christian thought-because we know that we are too weak to live in love for each other, as God would prefer?”

Dr. Young nods benignly, but not in agreement. “The trouble with rights,” he says, “is that, as soon as you have them, you think you have something of value. But all that has true value comes from the Lord. When you give a man a right, it is too easy to forget to love him.”

Lynda Wyatt catches the drift: “So compassion is more important than rights.”

“Rights are a thing of man,” Dr. Young agrees. “Loving our neighbor, turning to one another in charity and humility, is a gift we give back to the Lord.”

And then I see it. The chance of escape from the web my clever father, in death, has woven around me and my family. Everyone seeks the treasures of the earth, just as Morris Young suggested. The treasures of the earth. The earth. A memory tugs at me, an uncomfortable afternoon with the Judge many years ago, right on the campus. The white pawn. The Excelsior. The earth. Possibly, just possibly, I can make it all fit together.

“Amen, Reverend,” I echo, a glimmer of hope finally flashing in my tortured mind.

Ben Montoya and I leave the dinner at the same time, picking our way through the crusty snow toward the parking lot. He has timed his departure so perfectly that I am sure he wants to talk to me about something.

I am right.

Ben begins with a feint. “Do you think he really believes all that stuff?”

“Who? What stuff?”

“Reverend Young. All that stuff about Satan.”

I look at him. “I don’t have any doubt that Dr. Young believes every word of it. I believe it, too.”

Ben shakes his head but says nothing. A silence descends as we crunch through the snow, each of us alone with his thoughts: Ben no doubt confirmed in his opinion that I am out of my mind, and me recognizing the deep truth of what I have just reported. But Ben’s true purpose in following me out has nothing to do with theology or metaphysics.

“Ah, Talcott,” he murmurs officiously, after a few seconds of silence, and I know we have reached the main event.

“Hmmm?” I do not look in his direction. The walkway to the visitors’ lot leads between two rows of cookie-cutter units. Around the edges of drawn curtains or blinds, television images flash colorfully. I hear bursts of laughter, argument, music. But my attention is mainly on the sidewalk in front of me, from which this afternoon’s freezing rain has not yet been cleared. The condominium association is begging for a lawsuit, should somebody trip and fall.

“Talcott, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“We are talking, Ben. That’s what this is, talking.” I suppose I would like Ben more were he not Dean Lynda’s tool in so many of the various unseemly things a dean must do; or if I, too, were an insider; or if I were simply a better man.

Ben laughs shortly. He is, I suppose, about sixty, his hair thin on top and quite gray, his pouchy eyes wary yet accusatory behind thick glasses. His walk is the assertive lurch of a man in a great and irritated hurry. He is an anthropologist by training and has done important work on the way that contracts and property are handled in certain Pacific Islander societies that lack a tradition of making promises.

“Talcott, ah, you know, the Dean, well, she would never say anything, but…”

“But?”

“Lynda’s very upset with you, Talcott. You have to realize that.”

We have emerged at the poorly plowed visitors’ parking lot. My shabby Camry is off in a corner, but we are standing and facing each other, maybe because we are right next to Ben’s classic Jaguar XKE, or maybe because of what he just said to me.

“Upset about what?”

He blinks behind those powerful lenses. “Oh, well, you know. The way you’ve been acting lately. And this business with you and Marc.. .”

“There is no business with me and Marc.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.” I look him up and down, my temper flares redly, and Ben steps hastily back as though expecting a blow. “If Lynda wants to talk to me, she knows where to find me.”

“I’m not sure she does want to talk to you, Talcott.” The officious tone is back. Ben is expert at looking down on others, not only because of his height. “The Dean is too polite to say anything to you, but I understand you were abusive to her the last time you talked.”

“Abusive? We… we just had a disagreement, I wasn’t…”

He rolls right over me. “Then there is this business with the police earlier this week. I know you didn’t almost get arrested, but the situation was, ah, a little bit messy. We have to think of the law school’s image, Talcott. We can’t have a professor pouring gasoline on the racial fires in this town-”

“Ben-”

“No, no, I’m not saying you’re doing it intentionally. But people are likely to exploit what happened for political gain”-he means Kwame Kennerly-“and, well, we can’t have faculty members abetting this sort of thing, even unintentionally. And that’s not all, Talcott. Lynda also says you’re costing the school three million dollars…”

“Now, wait a minute! Wait just a minute!” Fresh snow is beginning to fall, and the wind is picking up. Road conditions will soon be treacherous, and we both should be hurrying home, but I want to make sure I have the message straight, because I know it is coming from Lynda, not from Ben. “Are you telling me that Cameron Knowland is really taking his money back? Because his spoiled brat of a son is mad at a professor?”

Ben has his palms toward me, a gesture of surrender. He has backed all the way to the door of his Jag. “I don’t know what Cameron is doing. I’m not privy to everything the Dean knows. I just want you to know that she’s upset with you, and… and, well, I think it would be a good idea if you were… um, on your best behavior…”

“Are you trying to warn me of something, Ben? Am I in some kind of actual trouble, or is this just a matter of ruffled feathers?”

Ben has the door of his car open. Having delivered his message, he seems to want no more conversation. “I just think you should be careful, that’s all. You should think of the good of the school.”

“As opposed to thinking of what? I don’t get it. Ben, wait.” He is sitting now, ready to close the door behind him. “What are you trying to tell me? Is this really about me, or is it about Kimmer and Marc?” I remember Stuart Land’s warning that pressures would be brought to bear. “Come on, Ben, tell me.”

“There isn’t anything to tell, Talcott.” His fierce eyes are looking straight ahead, as though he is angry at me for some offense I have yet to commit.

“But wait a minute. Wait. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” I put my hand on the door, not allowing him to close it. “Am I in trouble?” I ask again.

“I don’t know, Talcott. Are you in trouble?” As I struggle for a clever response, he points with his chin. “Would you mind taking your hand off my car?”

“Ben…”

“Good night, Talcott. Love to your family.”

He is gone.

Reeling, I nearly storm back into the party to confront Lynda Wyatt, to ask her what the real message is. But there would be no point. Lynda would deny everything. That is the reason to have a hatchet man in the first place: she can disavow whatever he says, and the message can still get across.

There are days when I hate this place.

I hurry through the snow to my own car, wishing for a way to put the whole pack of them behind me. Not only Lynda Wyatt and Ben Montoya and the others at the law school, but Uncle Mal and the Washington pack, too. I wish I could grab my family and head for the hills-or, failing that, for Oak Bluffs. A few thousand people live there year-round, after all. We could find a way to do it. We could run a bed and breakfast. Or hang out a shingle and practice law together. We could do it.

Not that Kimmer would go.

Still shaking with anger over my confrontation with Ben, I stab my key at the lock-my tough little Camry is too old to have a keyless entry system or an alarm-and then I notice that the door is already unlocked.

I must have left it that way, because nobody goes to the trouble of picking the lock of a car and then leaves the car. And nobody would steal a twelve-year-old car in the first place.

Except that, when I open the door and the dome light comes on, I realize that there are people after all who break into cars and take nothing, just as there are people who break into vacation homes and do the same thing.

Some people pick locks to make deliveries.

Lying squarely in the middle of the driver’s seat is the chess book that was stolen by the two men who beat me up.