Stillness & Shadows by John Gardner (accelerated reader books TXT) 📕

in his hand and frowned as if returning his attention to it, though he did not, musing instead on the idea of gloom. It was an odd thought that the dreary, philosophical gloom of Gerald Craine should be the normal gloom of Little Egypt. He was tempted to think otherwise, think something more to his own credit, but it seemed to him that the thought he’d stumbled on was sound. He would not count the young, the people who, by a sad irony, gave Southern Illinois the reputation of a party school—as if there were anything celebratory in that milling in the streets, smoking pot on curbs, drinking, dancing, knocking on the door of the mobile massage-parlor or drifting out at midnight down the county’s dirt roads and weed-choked lanes toward the lakes, woods, caves, or the immense stone cliffs of Giant City. That was just the gloom of indecision and uncertainty, ambition and desire not yet harnessed to some adequate illusion. But the gloom of the crocodiles—the weedlot Baptists and mowed-lawn Methodists, farmers of hardpan, managers of banks of no significant account—that was something else again, worthy of consideration and respect. That was philosophical, not personal gloom: Lazarus’ objective detachment, weighing the husk of life, tossing it in his hand, solemnly judging it: Due cause of woe. It was true, he had never been quite fair to the crocodiles. He’d heard a story once, a meeting of the Klan in some farmer’s back lot. Rain had come, a soaker, and before they could escape all their Ford and Chevy pickups and sedans were stuck. They might have been there for a week, but some blacks came along with a wrecker and helped them, didn’t even specially overcharge them for it. You’d think it might have led to some changes, but no. They’d been fooled all their lives by appearances: land that seemed rich—but then it cracked, or washed out from under them in a sudden roar of yellow—a gospel that seemed to promise happiness but none came … Even the government they’d fought wars for and paid honest taxes to had proved, in the end, one more sinister trick. Heath candy bar and Bell Telephone made a fortune on farming, while they, one by one, moved to town and gave up, to live by welfare. Therefore the crocodiles had no interest in how things seemed. They continued to burn crosses—those who were mean enough—carefully refraining from any other violence than the violence of the heart. They hardly knew what they were doing, not civilized human beings but reversions to the archaic; Craine’s brothers, he thought now: gloom transformed to gesture.

Fragment Six

A door opened, down the corridor, apparently someone letting class out early. A few students came into the hall, then more, among others a blond girl Craine had seen around town before, strikingly beautiful but homosexual, real crime. Watching how she walked, legs unbecomingly solid, like a hod carrier’s, head slightly forward—why would even a man want to walk like that? Craine thought—he almost missed it when Ira Katz came out, dressed in jeans and work shirt, carrying a bulging, bursting briefcase, black-bearded head cocked far to the right for balance. He was halfway down the corridor, beyond the crowd of students, when Craine got the presence of mind to go after him. Now someone else had let a class out early, and it was all Craine could do to keep sight of Ira’s hurrying head and shoulders. The students around the doors where their classes had been were in no hurry to break up, talking and laughing, gossiping, complaining, making timid or bold advances in the old, old game. “That’s college,” Craine thought, and accidentally said it aloud as he pressed against the wall, crowding past. They should advertise that way. Looking for a pretty girl that likes geography? Still more doors opened, and more slow-moving students, smiling like theater people between acts, came wandering out into the corridor, massive and indefinite of purpose as cattle.

“Excuse me,” Craine said, pushing past, “excuse me!” But when he came to the stairs going down and up, he couldn’t tell, even when he jumped to get a look above the others’ heads, which way Katz had gone. Down, Craine decided, for no good reason—indeed, when he’d gone two steps he knew he’d chosen wrong, but it was too late to go back, the crowd was all around him.

But near the foot of the stairs he saw Ira again. He’d come down after all and was striding past the elevators, fifty feet away, moving, almost running, toward the high glass doors that led outside. “Excuse me,” Craine said, “sorry, emergency!” trying to push through. The students in front of him looked up over their shoulders, not eager to let him pass, and moved only a little, neither so little he had a right to be angry nor so much that he had room to get by. When he reached the main floor, Ira Katz was nowhere to be seen. He made his way to the big glass doors, but it was clearly hopeless. He ought to be right out there, in the wide span of sunlight between Faner and the woods, but if Ira was among those unchaining their bicycles or moving, heads bent, into the shadows of trees, Craine was miraculously missing him.

He turned back toward the stairs and registered now for the first time that there were pay phones over by the elevators. He crossed to them quickly—only one of them was in use—and hunted through his pockets for dimes, then called Hannah.

“Any news?” he asked.

“You heard about the man at the computer center?”

“Professor Furth, yes. They’re sure it was an accident?”

“I don’t see how they can be, but I haven’t talked with McClaren yet.”

“Did Meakins catch up with Terrance Rush?”

“Hasn’t checked in yet. I expect I’ll get a call from him any time.”

“OK. Listen, Hannah, I need you to take over with the girl for me. I got some