Bleedout: A Novel

1

BUT WHY DID HE KILL THEM?

Try as I might, I cannot find an answer that satisfies me. Stephanie assures me that I would understand if I could see him, but I’ve been blind for a quarter of a century. I cannot make out as much as a man’s outline in full sun. And yet even on the first day I met him, he gave off a sense of threat as soon as he entered the room. He was only a boy then, a couple of months short of sixteen, and already a multiple murderer who would have been on death row if not for his age. That could hardly be it, though. I was used to murderers. I knew the rattle-clank of chains and leg irons.

The more I think about it, the more I think it must have been the way he breathed; I swear I could hear his fury at the very oxygen that gave him life as he took it into his lungs and let it go. The Chernobyl melt-down had dominated the radio for almost a week, and I remember thinking, Rage is the nuclear core that powers the boy.

All this intensity failed to tell me why he killed them. It still does.

Twenty years of living with the question, and now I find myself in the absurd situation of a man about to be murdered—without the hope of my answer first.

A truck approached along Route 97 out of Springfield, Illinois, going toward Petersburg. A slanting, bleak, early-morning sun shone, but there was no warmth in it. This part of America is fiercely cold in winter. The truck slowed as it passed through the gates of Oakland Cemetery and hit the buckled road that is never repaired until spring, then continued over a small rise ringed round with naked winter branches. Papaws grow here, larch and beech too, and the south fork of the Sangamon River is almost close enough to see.

This is one of the most famous burial places in the country. It’s the site of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology and the grave of Ann Rutledge, beloved of Abraham Lincoln, wedded to him, as Masters’s poem on her gravestone reads, not through union, but through separation. Edgar Lee himself is buried here. So are his wives, his parents, his grandparents, his nephews and their wives. So are dozens of characters from his poems, Mitch Miller, Lucinda Matlock, Bowling and Nancy Green.

Hannah Armstrong is buried here too. She stitched Abe Lincoln’s shirts and foxed his pants; she’s the one who told him on the day he was elected, They’ll kill ye, Abe. Not far from her lies Chester Gould, who created Dick Tracy. And not far from him, there’s Johnny Stompanato, gangster, stabbed to death with a kitchen knife by Hollywood goddess Lana Turner’s daughter and buried with full military honors under the personal direction of that mobster of mobsters, Mickey Cohen.

Despite such colorful dead and despite one of the prettiest woodlands for miles around, a vast, bulbous water tower is what sets the tone. It’s blue and white, and looms over the countryside atop a single spindly stilt, garish, ungainly, intrusive. The graves look shoddy, even Ann Rutledge’s and Johnny Stompanato’s. They reek of cheap and cheesy haste, death stashed away as fast as possible: a glance at a shiny catalogue and a quick talk with an oily somebody who promises to handle all the unpleasantness. A few relatives do come to pay a pious postfuneral visit with plastic flowers. But by the time winter gets its teeth in, even these meager offerings have faded under a coat of grime and dirt.

Beyond the main set of graves, the paved road ends.

The truck slowed to a creep here; a sign on its baby blue side read P. M. Wurtzel and Son in elegant copperplate lettering. It jounced along a rutted dirt path past a cluster of trees and into a secluded area, a tiny Eden where there was only one grave, different from the others, a delicate, hand-carved stone rather like the ones found in English country churchyards. The dogwood that overhangs it blooms every spring. The truck stopped. Six men bundled out and stamped their feet against the cold.

The ground was solid ice some five to six inches beneath the surface that morning. In olden days, winter corpses piled up in the woodshed until spring and the thaw; these state-of-the-art workmen set up a propane heater—a model specially designed for the purpose—and began defrosting. They powered up a generator for the pneumatic drill, reamed out holes for stakes, erected poles and strung ropes to build a frame. What emerged was a sturdy tent, and how unexpected it looked in the cold landscape, this touch of summer gaiety escaped from the state fair. It was summertime inside too. Portable heaters warmed the air; brilliant green AstroTurf covered the floor except where the ground defroster stood. Chairs stood in orderly rows, a lectern in front of them.

Only then did the crew remove the ground defroster and begin to dig. But when they finished, the hole was only two feet square and three feet deep, just big enough to take in an elderly aunt’s cat or maybe her Pekingese. More AstroTurf went down into the gap; they patted it into place as cooks might pat dough into an irregularly shaped pie pan and then began to gather up their tools in preparation for the boss’s arrival.

This was an important funeral. The press would attend, and the crew sensed excitement in the air.

My name is Hugh Freyl. I am a corporate lawyer, and I went blind in O’Hare Airport only half an hour before the last flight to Springfield.

At the time, I was deep into the hydra-headed litigation spawned by the merger of Michigan Genetic and Westman-Boyle. There was $800 million at stake, and the route to this pot of gold was littered with class-action suits, accusations of covert premiums, secret share deals, illusory poison pills. No corporate lawyer can resist a case like this, and I had just about mastered enough of the detail for a plan of action to emerge.

I cannot imagine why I should have felt abruptly restless. Nor can I imagine why I left the safety of American Airlines’ business lounge or why I wandered out into the concourse or why I sat down there in among the bustle of people. But the last thing I saw was Terminal Two’s high-vaulted ceiling. I looked up at it, then rested my head in my hands and closed my eyes. When I opened them again…

Not a thing. Nothing. A blank screen.

My beautiful Rose had migraines; she had described the blind spots that preceded them—and always went away. I told myself to be calm, to wait it out. I told myself this too would pass. But even as I mouthed the words, I bolted off my chair, stumbled, half fell, reached out, caught hold of somebody, started to babble.

Please help me. I do not know what’s—

The somebody shook me off.

I stuck my arms out in front of me—there were people everywhere, I could hear them—and yet somehow, magically, there was only empty space around me, eye of the storm, pin-the-tail-on-the-

donkey at a children’s party. I lunged out and managed to snag a passerby.

You’ve got to help—

Let go. It was a man. I had him by the coat, and he yanked at it.

Find me a doctor. I could hear pleading in my voice. Please help me to—

Let go of me!

I need a—

Just let go, huh?

I cannot see. I know there’s a medical station by the—

Sure, sure. Wait here, huh?

And he was gone. I waited. Nobody came.

I caught hold of a woman next. She escaped with a shriek. I caught another. She listened and disappeared. I got a man who found me a place to sit down before he disappeared too. I sat there for…I could not possibly say. It seemed hours. I did not dare get up. My legs felt gelatinous; I knew I would never find my way to another seat.

And then she came to me: You okay, mister? You’re looking kind of peaked.

It was a wavery voice, impossible in a young woman, but not weak or aged either; when she left me—ostensibly to find that elusive doctor—it did not cross my mind that she would come back any more than the others had. And yet five minutes later I had a whole medical team around me.

Where’s my Good Samaritan? I said to them. Please. I must thank her. I must speak to her.

Don’t you worry none, came that wavery voice. This here’s a doctor. He’s gonna fix you up. You gonna be okay.

I hardly know… I had not wept since I was a boy; I was so grateful that tears poured down my cheeks. How can I ever thank you?

No need for that, sir. Anybody’d have done the same.

At ten-thirty, just as the workmen packed away the last of their tools, the media began to arrive at Oakland Cemetery. WICS-TV had come from Decatur, where there had been mysterious attacks on three McDonald’s in a single week; the CNN crew had traveled overnight from Biloxi and a story on the run-ups to the Miss Winter Orange beauty contest. Video technicians wielded shoulder cameras, filming this grave and that vista; audio technicians tested microphones; interviewers jockeyed for position. Print and radio reporters arrived with notebooks, tape recorders, still cameras.

All were in place by the time the president of P. M. Wurtzel Funeral Home arrived. The son and heir of the original P. M. Wurtzel himself was fresh-faced, aggressively young, pink-cheeked, athletic if somewhat overweight, a Bible-belt product of vitamins and virtue. He bowed for the cameramen, who dutifully filmed him and the box he carried so decorously, a small, highly polished wooden thing decorated with a filigree design in polished brass.

At eleven, Springfield’s matriarch, Becky Freyl, arrived in the family Lexus SUV and got out, helped by the substantial Lillian, her cook and companion. Microphones, interviewers, tape recorders rushed forward. Cameras rolled and clicked. At eighty-seven, Becky was tall and fine-featured, as intensely feminine as the southern belle she had always been, but she ruled this town with the sharp wit and the painfully sharp tongue that had whipped it into shape sixty years earlier when she arrived from the big city of Atlanta to marry into the Freyl family of Springfield.

Interviewers began talking even before they reached her.

What about the investigation, Mrs. Freyl? What about David Marion?

Is Marion still in custody? Four days is a long time to hold somebody without a charge. Can you comment on that?

Do you think they’ve got the right man?

"Do you think he killed your son?"

Becky did not flinch. She stared them down with an old-fashioned schoolmarm’s cold disapproval, not the slightest attempt to cover her face or avert her eyes. No hint—beyond pursed lips—of the pain they were causing her. Composure this imperial is rare. These crews had never run into it before, and they fell silent in front of it, awkward, sheepish, uncertain.

Would you kindly let me pass? she said then. Her voice carried only a whisper of a southern accent.

The questions erupted again.

You get them cameras out of here, Lillian said, taking over. "You know you ain’t supposed to talk to her. You know that. What’s the matter with you anyhow? Ain’t you got no respect for nothing? You bother her with one more question, and that’s the last one you ever ask in this town, you hear me?"

The flock retired in disarray, and Becky resumed her stately progress up the AstroTurf path toward the tent.

Once inside, she turned to P. M. Wurtzel’s president. And you are?

He cleared his throat to emphasize his illustrious name. "I am D. Morrison—"

Yes, yes. The undertaker, she interrupted.

He bowed. "Bereavement consultant, ma’am. At your service."

Becky frowned at the vulgarism, looked around her and noted the little box that P. M. Wurtzel’s president had placed on the chair his crew had set beside the freshly dug opening in the ground. What’s that?

We have been privileged to place the deceased’s mortal—

A jewelry case? You’ve put my son in a jewelry case?

Oh, no, no, no. No, no. This is the very finest in our top range for loved ones who have been cremated. You yourself chose—

What is he doing on a folding chair? Hugh hated chairs like that. They wobble. Take him off at once.

P. M. Wurtzel’s president was flustered. He blushed. He shifted from one foot to the other. I’m afraid the workmen broke the altar when they—

Do you always blame your shortcomings on other people, young man?

Oh, no, ma’am, I assure you—

Can you not at least cover it with some of that—she gestured at the AstroTurf—that hideous material?

Over the next few minutes, cameras recorded snippets of other mourners as they arrived in cars as elegant as Becky’s and climbed the AstroTurf path to the tent: lawyers, doctors, bankers and their wives, the cream of society, members of that most exclusive of clubs, the Springfield One Hundred—some of them with a full five generations of Illinois history behind them. But when Senator John Calder arrived, cameras surged forward.

What about the future, Senator?

What do you think of the Governor’s Mansion, Mrs. Calder?

What about Governor Szymankiewicz? When are you going to start getting him out of there?

Everybody said John Calder was going to be the next governor of Illinois. The election was a year away, but Szymankiewicz didn’t stand a chance next to Calder. Everybody knew that. How could it be otherwise? Nobody could pronounce that tongue-twister of a name. The press had gleefully dubbed the poor man Sissy. Besides, John Calder was the one who had the Freyl fortune and the Freyl connections behind him. Even more important, he was Springfield’s own son; he’d been born and educated with other local kids. He’d giggled over bowls of garlic-laden chili at the Dew Chili Parlor and got drunk at dances at the country club. He’d worshipped at the feet of Libby Jennings, high school sweetheart, and crashed his father’s car into a motel out near White Oaks Mall. Then, to top it off, he’d come back from law school in Chicago to practice in the town just like Springfield’s most famous lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. And like Lincoln, John Calder was one of those rare figures whom the camera loves. Practically every picture of him ran, no matter how mundane the setting. Which is to say that whatever John Calder did was news. Whatever his young wife did was news too; in this cold graveyard she clung to his arm and smiled adoringly up at him. She was elaborately coiffed, dressed in multiple layers of mourning, hatted and veiled. A reporter from the Illinois Times noted all this into a tape recorder. Sometimes Mrs. Calder made her own clothes; as soon as the press discovered one of them, women all over the state employed seamstresses to copy her.

The senator wore a somber overcoat and a stiff collar; nobody should look too comfortable at a funeral. This is no time for speculation or politics, he said. I am here to mourn my friend and to do what I can to support his family through this terrible hour. Hugh Freyl was a great American. His death is a blow to the country and to freedom itself.

It was an eminently quotable speech: short, to the point, emotional but not sloppy: it would make the opening slot on evening news programs throughout Illinois. The cameras followed the senator into the tent. His head was bowed. His pace was reluctant but brave. Perfect.

Inside, the Calders embraced Becky, who bore up under their tributes with rigid shoulders and a straight back, just as she had borne up under the attentions of lesser mortals. All the seats in the tent were full. The minister arrived last, tall, thin, decorous if a little pinched—the cold, perhaps. His ears and nose were a startling pink. He whispered to Becky, held her hand, whispered some more, went to the lectern, opened his prayer book and began.

‘Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a—’

And who should walk through the opening to the tent but David Marion himself.

2

I SPENT MY FIRST YEAR AS A BLIND MAN GOING FROM doctor to doctor and test to test. One famous Chicago authority announced that I had ocular larva migrans, an infection caused by roundworms in the intestines of dogs and cats. Another insisted on a rare inherited condition called Leber’s optic neuropathy, while a colleague of his scoffed at nerve involvement of any kind. Between them they ruled out all vascular ailments and injury. The only thing the experts agreed on was that I had suffered sudden bilateral painless visual loss. Their joint diagnosis boiled down to an idiopathic condition, which turns out to be an elegant way of saying that no one had any idea why I had gone blind in two seconds flat.

I ended the year as helpless as I had begun it.

Sudden disablement is a terrible shock to the system. When the able-bodied call people like me brave, what they really have in mind is, Thank God I don’t have to do anything about you. I hated them for it. I hated them for being able to see when I could not. I hated them when they helped me, and I hated them even more when they failed to help or made no effort to do so. Furniture, knives and forks, toothbrushes conspired to hide from me, and I hated them too. Learning Braille seemed like an admission of defeat. So did using a cane or any other tools the blind rely on. I spent my days slumped in front of a television I could not see, listening to the sound tracks of old movies.

The sad and humbling fact of the matter is that bitterness at this level bores everybody, even the one who feels it. One afternoon, grudging and complaining, I allowed Rose to coax me into some lessons in Braille. To my surprise I turned out to be good at it, and I had forgotten how much pleasure there is in mastering a new skill. Then one day—it was very sudden—the thought that a guide dog might allow me to walk outside on my own seemed exhilarating. So was the thought that I might find my way around inside the house with a cane.

I spent the next six months as a resident at the Lincoln Center for the Newly Blind about a hundred miles north of Springfield. I had to learn everything again like a child: how to overcome such obstacles as rain, snow, gutters, gravel; how to negotiate a doorway in a strange house and cross a four-lane highway; how to make a mental map of my route indoors as well as outside; how to boil an egg and find a water glass on a table without knocking it over. I even learned some wrestling and judo to heighten my grasp of space relationships. Equally important were simple concert, a parade, a state fair; how to handle a menu in a restaurant and go dancing in a nightclub.

It was in pursuit of this last goal—an evening on the town—that I ran head-on into the hardest lesson the newly disabled have to learn and one that no school is equipped to teach even though all of them try very hard to prepare their pupils for it.

The evening began well—perhaps too well. There were twelve of us in a party that included our instructor, several partially sighted pupils from the Center and several of the wholly blind like me. Dinner was at Las Cruces, a catfish restaurant on the banks of the Illinois River. The food was good. So was the wine. The talk was animated, and I remember a sense of burgeoning confidence, almost elation, as the meal progressed. After dinner, we left in taxis for a night spot called Nemesis—a painfully apt name as it turned out—on the other side of the river.

A band from Carbondale was playing that night; the atmosphere was heady and noisy as we paid the cover charge at the door. Waiters pushed tables together for us. I had only just sat down when our instructor touched my shoulder.

You’d better get up again, Hugh, she said. We’ve got to leave.

What’s the matter? Is somebody sick?

They’re throwing us out.

I knew from her voice that she was not joking, but the evening was so full of promise that I could not quite take it in. Whatever for? I said.

The manager is right here beside you, and he is adamant.

I am basically a peaceable man, a firm believer in negotiation. But my reaction was the instant, visceral rebellion of a five-year-old when his favorite toy is snatched from his hands. If he wants me out, I said, he is going to have to drag me.

Now you just look here, mister, came the manager’s voice, a meaty baritone, full of swagger and demand. It isn’t safe here for you guys. It’s crowded, and I sure as hell am not going to find myself sued when one of you gets hurt. You’re going to be spilling drinks all over the place. You’re going to be bumping into people and knocking over tables. Who’s going to take you to the bathroom when you got to go? Tell me that, huh? My staff got too much on their hands to babysit you.

Ignorance and callousness are hard enough to bear, and I had already learned far more about them than I wanted to know. But this time there was loathing: black skins, yellow skins, Muslims, foreigners, women—and the disabled. Blind, Down’s syndrome, deaf, legless, epileptic: what difference does it make? We are no more likely to spill drinks than you are, I said, and I had to fight to keep my voice steady. I turned to the others. Please sit down. We have every right to be here.

The manager withdrew without another word. We tried for a few minutes to recover the party mood, but it was a lost cause; we were all in agreement that the evening was over by the time we heard the wail of police cars—which none of us associated with ourselves. I was just getting up to find my coat when I felt a policeman’s hand on my shoulder. Sir, if you don’t leave I’m going to have to arrest you, he said to me.

I sat down again at once. I crossed my arms. Are you aware, Officer, I said, that Illinois was the first state in the union to institute a White Cane Law? I believe the year was 1937.

He sighed. Okay, guys, we got no choice.

They handcuffed my hands behind my back and jostled me into a squad car along with two others, both of whom had backed up my protest. It is not easy to describe a first taste of unadulterated humiliation. They say that doctors have no grasp of disease until they have been seriously sick themselves. Lawyer that I had been, I knew nothing of the burn of injustice. I had no idea what it did to people, and I was sunk so deep in it that I only half heard the charges against us: remaining on land after having been forbidden. I alone was singled out for aiding and abetting others to commit this violation of the City Code. A date for an arraignment was set, and we were released on our own recognizance.

I had a bad night, but by morning, I knew what to do. Before noon, I had composed my first legal letter since going blind. I addressed it to the city attorney, a Mr. Phillip Ross, and I laid out for him a clear case against the city and the police department for false arrest and for violation of the White Cane Law. I gave him two weeks to reply. I noted at the bottom of the letter that copies were going out to newspapers, both local and statewide. A media outcry followed. All charges were dropped, but by this time, not one of the twelve members of our ill-fated party was willing to let it rest. We formed a legal committee. We brought suit on behalf of the Center and ourselves. We won just over $500,000 in damages, and with it, the Lincoln Center built and equipped the first computer department in the country dedicated solely to the needs of the blind.

But what was most important to me personally was that I was back. I had reclaimed the tools that I had lost. I was in business again.

Somewhat to my own surprise I found that the cutthroat world of corporate law still intrigued me more than the civil rights that had nudged me back to my profession, and yet blindness had changed me subtly as well as obviously. I felt the need—almost a vocation—to help other people in some simple way, something comparable to what the Center had done for me. My friends and colleagues thought the idea was just sentimental. They enjoyed teasing me with proposals; I have forgotten which of them brought up the Illinois State Education in Prisons program—always in need of part-time teachers—although it was just another dinner-party joke. I remember the laughter, and yet I knew at once that I had found what I was looking for.

I do not doubt that criminals should be segregated from law-abiding citizens. But I despise the idea of degrading people just for the sake of it, whether the people are the disabled, the poor, the old or the convicts we put behind bars. Of all of us, prisoners have it worst; their humiliation is continual, ritual, extreme. Part of the reason it persists is that most inmates are ignorant; they do not have the tools that allowed a blind man like me to make a stand for his dignity. Most convicts must burn—as I did—with the injustices of the system under which they suffer. Education alone delivers the weapons to fight it.

I put my name forward.

I had been teaching for nearly three years when young David Marion appeared on my list of pupils. I was not called in on his case because he expressed a desire to learn—he most emphatically did not—but because he was so young. As far back as 1917, Illinois state law required that children be educated to the age of sixteen and to the literacy standards of the sixth grade; this boy was only fifteen, and his record stated that he could not read at all.

Good afternoon, Mr. Marion, I said to him. There was no reply, so I said to the guard, Would you kindly remove his manacles? Nobody can learn if he’s in chains.

The guard refused. I insisted.

Now you may go, I said to the guard.

He refused. I insisted.

When David and I were alone, I turned to him. You do not belong in this facility, Mr. Marion. I will arrange a transfer at once. But that’s a…curious name to have…in here: Marion.

It was more than just curious. The prison was Marion Federal Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, south and a little east of Springfield, and it is a barbaric place, the most violent and repressive in the entire federal system, the true heir to Alcatraz. By the time of my first visit with David, it was already the repository of many of Alcatraz’s former prisoners. Institutionalized racism, institutionalized religious intolerance, inedible food and inadequate portions, solitary confinement for ninety days for minor infringements, minimal medical treatment, mass reprisals at the slightest infraction, routine beatings, rape–gang rape, individual rape, private rape, public rape.

To bestow the name Marion on a child sounded like a curse to me—and so it turned out to have been when I learned a little more about the boy. It is hardly surprising that there was no reply to my comment.

Mr. Marion?

I ain’t going nowhere.

This is a federal prison, and yours is not a federal offense.

I want to stay where I am, you hear me?

I hear you.

You won’t do nothing, right?

There is not even a Young Offenders’ wing in this institution.

Ah, fuck it.

You were convicted of murder in a state court, Mr. Marion. How did you come to be in a federal prison? He did not answer. You most certainly do not belong here, not under any circumstances. You are only fifteen years old. Do please understand that my only purpose in arranging a transfer is to make your life more bearable. I am certain that you will adjust readily to the change.

Again he did not answer. I sighed irritably. I suggest you open your book. Perhaps we can discuss a transfer later.

Jesus, you don’t know nothing about nothing.

The book, Mr. Marion.

But he was clearly too preoccupied with the transfer to respond. I found this reaction as puzzling as the extraordinary tension that the suggestion had aroused in him. He made me think of an animal just seconds who has just heard a death sentence delivered, and I wondered a little nervously if I had been hasty in asking the guard to remove his chains. Perhaps he had become sexually entangled with one of the inmates. Such things are very common in prisons, especially with boys as young as he, who are often mercilessly abused and exploited by older prisoners. The lives of these victims can be miserable beyond our imaginings; all manner of horrors can be held over their heads to keep them compliant—beating, mutilation, enforced prostitution, threats to friends and family on the outside, even death—easily frightening enough to provoke the kind of reaction I sensed in David Marion. As a lawyer, I knew I must get this vulnerable young person away from the penitentiary as quickly as possible, with his cooperation or without it.

The tense silence stretched between us until I was almost ready to call the guard, then abruptly he relaxed, as though he had managed to steel himself against the move or had resigned himself to whatever it entailed.

You’re screwing me over, you asshole, he said, and you don’t even know it.

I cannot for the life of me see how a move to a less repressive facility could be other than an improvement.

He gave a snort of contempt. So you’re here to teach me reading and writing, huh?

Among other things.

Like what?

Is that a serious question?

Christ, you’re nothing but a goofy old blind guy.

I leaned forward in my chair. I certainly cannot deny being blind, I said, although I assure you I wish with all my heart that I could. But despite my limitations, I do see some things clearly. First, I can see that your self-control is not absolute. You would not be behind bars if it were. Secondly, I see that your intellect is adequate to the job I have been set to carry out on your behalf. Finally, I can see that you are not aware of how very ignorant you are. It is here that I can be most helpful to you, because I am sorry to inform you that the uneducated are the un-empowered in our society and that neither your self-control nor your intellect will get you anywhere—behind bars or out in front of them—unless you have access to power. Blind though I am—’goofy’ though I rather hope I am—power is precisely what I have to give you, and I will do my utmost to fulfill my task.

There was a pause. Where the fuck did you get a hold of a spiel like that?

And so the lessons began.

There was no chair for David in the funeral tent. Of course there wasn’t. He stood by the opening, holding the canvas flap against the wind; the minister fluffed himself and began a second time.

‘Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down…’

Imagine somebody who had always kept his word in a world where nobody does. Imagine somebody who had actually delivered the power he’d promised in that elegant, early speech. Then this very same person proceeded to get his pupil out of prison to make use of it. For eighteen years, Hugh was visitor, teacher, adviser. And finally, liberator.

How could such a man be reduced to something that would fit into such a little box?

3

THE GRAVESIDE SERVICE FOR HUGH FREYL WAS MERCIFULLY short, and the funeral guests departed for a buffet lunch at his mother’s house some ten miles southeast in Springfield itself.

Springfield is the state capital of Illinois. Lincoln practiced law here for nearly a quarter of a century; he ran for senator here both as a Whig and as a Republican, and even though he lost both senatorial bids, he initiated his campaign for president here. To this day, he brings in hordes of tourists that keep the town’s cash flow so healthy that his birthday is celebrated as a major holiday for a patron saint. Springfield grew into a big town on his back, 115,000 strong, and the Freyls have been its leading family since long before he arrived in it.

Right at the beginning the Freyls bought large tracts of land both in the middle of town and in the surrounding countryside; there are streets named after various forefathers and a square dedicated to Becky Freyl’s husband, dead of a heart attack over a decade ago. The Rebecca Freyl Museum of Art houses the work of artists from across the country, and the Rebecca Freyl Opera House was nearly complete in a special plot just off the Capitol Complex. Becky herself lived beneath a pure copper roof in a stately structure surrounded by a private park. The funeral guests took roundabout routes to the house to allow for the few minutes of preparation that would be necessary.

By the time Allen Madison, president of the Springfield Federal Bank, pulled up in his Cadillac with his willowy and still-handsome wife, there were already two dozen cars along the driveway. His wife sighed irritably as he rang the bell beside the massive oak door.

We’re late, she said.

If you hadn’t bawled on that pancake you slap all over your face, we’d have been here first, said the banker. He was a dour, bitter man, very proud of his presidential name and his resemblance to the affable Ronald Reagan—which really was marked if he got drunk enough and the light fell on him from just the right angle. But he hadn’t yet had his first drink of the day, and morning light is always harsh. He gave her a cold glance. You didn’t even like Hugh Freyl.

How can you say such a thing? I adored him—especially looking at him. Pity I never got much closer than that.

Tall, long windows flanked the front door; the son of Becky’s staunch protector and servant, Lillian, opened it for them. Morning, Mr. Madison, Mrs. Madison, he said. If you can just step this way, Mrs. Freyl will be right with you.

The couple were wholly familiar with the elegant Chinese slates in this foyer; they knew the graceful arch of the staircase that rose up to the bedrooms above. They’d been coming here for a quarter of a century, dinners, cocktail parties, Sunday lunch. But this morning there were so many people packed into the space that the quarried floor tiles were barely visible and the living room beyond was blocked from view. The banker’s wife—her first name was Ruth—hadn’t counted on a receiving line; it clogged the flow of new arrivals like a supermarket checkout at rush hour. Besides, her shoes were patent leather and a little tight. She let Lillian’s son remove the coat from her expensive shoulders, and she turned distractedly to embrace her closest friend and bridge partner, the broker’s wife.

Where’s Piet? she asked.

These two women had known each other since they were children; they’d been the most popular girls in town all the way through school, but the broker’s wife hadn’t held on to her looks the way Ruth had. Not even plastic surgery could disguise a thin neck barely supporting a head that wobbled pompomlike on top of it.

He got here early, the broker’s wife said of Piet, her husband. The bastard.

Trouble?

Need you ask?

Oh, dear, said Ruth a little absently, craning her neck to see who else was corralled in the foyer. Hugh’s four senior partners at Herndon & Freyl clubbed together as they always did, wives on their arms—all except for Jimmy Zemanski. Hugh’s doctor and his wife were there along with the biggest Angus breeder in the state and his wife. The owner of Wake & Field Engineering, who supplied toilet fixtures to motels throughout the Midwest, stood just behind a grouping that included two identical blond heads. Why do women of uncertain age insist on that shiny gold? It makes them look so haggard. Anyhow, those two bleaches meant that the mayor of Springfield was right on the point of entering the sanctum beyond with his twin daughters and probably their husbands, too.

The crowd in the foyer thinned more rapidly as Hugh’s partners began their way through the receiving-line formalities. Ruth’s friend, the broker’s wife, shifted foot to foot. Only six to go, she sighed.

Ruth turned to her with a delighted smile. David Marion’s already in that room, you know.

"No! He’s here too? That beat-up Chevrolet is his?"

Ruth nodded. "I wouldn’t be surprised if he got us a mention in the society pages of The New York Times."

The broker’s wife laughed. Not even the maid would drive a heap like that.

Come, come. It’s a classic. She probably couldn’t keep it up.

At the entrance to the living room stood the senator and young Mrs. Calder, both of them at Becky’s side. When the Madisons finally got that far, Ruth and the senator’s wife kissed cheeks. The senator shook the banker’s hand and held it in both of his (he was famous for this handshake).

Sad business. Sad business, he said.

A difficult time for us all, said the banker.

Then came Becky herself. Ruth would have kissed her too if that unyielding back had not indicated that the time for such things was past. Ruth stumbled a little—fearful that she might not be doing precisely the right thing—but managed to deliver the little speech she kept in reserve for the bereaved at funerals. Becky cocked her head to catch every word. The banker received the same rapt attention. Becky thanked them both graciously and said, Please have Lillian give you something to eat and drink.

The Madisons moved on into a living room that was airy, rich-textured, as elegant as any featured in style magazines from New York and San Francisco. There was a Japanese subtlety to the arrangement of pictures on the walls and the artifacts on tables and shelves, even in the tapestry that Becky had designed herself: these things showed an éclat that everybody here had the money to indulge in if only they’d known how. How easy it was to see that she was born to the sophistication of Atlanta. No wonder she was still arbiter of the town’s taste, bellwether of its manners, its style, its pursuits.

The large room was crowded. At one end stood a mahogany dining table laden with platters of rare sliced beef fillet and German potato salad, bread, china, silverware. There were bottles of Scotch, bourbon, martini mixings, a bucket of ice and frozen glasses. Lillian presided. Becky’s liquor was always the best, and the guests collected drinks and drifted into little groups. Ruth Madison floated out of her husband’s vicinity and toward Piet, husband of her best friend. They had recently come to a private arrangement that included Tuesday and Friday afternoons at the St. Nicholas Hotel; the affair was only a month old, and standing near each other in public brought with it a tantalizing, illicit charge.

I’ve had such a hard year, she whispered into his ear; her large brown eyes sloped downward at the outer edge, giving her the vulnerable charm of a night animal in the forest.

What is it? he said, solicitous, worried, knowing from her