The Secret History (59 page)

On the way to Francis’s, a pregnant dog ran across the road in front of us.

“That,” said Henry, “is a very bad omen.”

But of what he wouldn’t say.

The news was just beginning. The anchorman glanced up from his papers, looking grave but at the same time very pleased. “The frantic search—thus far a fruitless one—continues, for missing Hampden College student Edward Corcoran.”

“Gosh,” said Camilla, reaching into her brother’s coat pocket for a cigarette. “You’d think they’d get his name right, don’t you?”

The picture cut to an aerial shot of snowy hills, dotted like a war map with pinprick figures, Mount Cataract looming lopsided and huge in the foreground.

“An estimated three hundred searchers,” said the voice-over, “including National Guard, police, Hampden firefighters and Central Vermont Public Service employees, combed the hard-to-reach area on this, Day Two of the search. In addition, the FBI has launched an investigation of its own in Hampden today.”

The picture wobbled, then switched abruptly to a lean, white-haired man in a cowboy hat who the caption informed us was Dick Postonkill, Hampden County sheriff. He was talking, but no sound came from his mouth; searchers milled curiously in the snowy background, raising on tiptoe to jeer silently at the camera.

After a few moments, the audio lurched on with a jerky, garbled sound. The sheriff was in the middle of a sentence.

“—to remind hikers,” he said, “to go out in groups, stay on the trail, leave a projected itinerary and carry plenty of warm clothing in case of sudden drops in temperature.”

“That was Hampden County sheriff Dick Postonkill,” said the anchorman brightly, “with a few tips for our viewers on winter hiking safety.” He turned, and the camera zoomed in on him at a different angle. “One of the only leads so far in the Corcoran disappearance case has been provided by William Hundy, a local businessman and ActionNews Twelve viewer, who phoned our TIPS line with information regarding the missing youth. Today Mr. Hundy has been cooperating with state and local authorities in providing a description of Corcoran’s alleged abductors.…”

“ ‘State and local,’ ” said Henry.

“What?”

“Not federal.”

“Of course not,” said Charles. “Do you think the FBI is going to believe some dumb story that a Vermonter made up?”

“Well, if they don’t, why are they here?” said Henry.

This was a disconcerting thought. In the brilliant, delayed-tape noontime sun, a group of men hurried down the courthouse steps. Mr. Hundy, his head down, was among them. His hair was slicked back and he wore, in lieu of his service station uniform, a baby-blue leisure suit.

A reporter—Liz Ocavello, a sort of local celebrity, with her own current-issues program and a segment called “Movie Beat” on the local news—approached, microphone in hand. “Mr. Hundy,” she said. “Mr. Hundy.”

He stopped, confused, as his companions walked ahead and left him standing alone on the steps. Then they realized what was going on and came back up to huddle around him in an official-looking cluster. They grabbed Hundy by the elbows and made as if to hustle him away but he hung back, reluctant.

“Mr. Hundy,” said Liz Ocavello, nudging her way in. “I understand you have been working today with police artists on composite drawings of the persons you saw with the missing boy on Sunday.”

Mr. Hundy nodded rather briskly. His shy, evasive manner of the day before had given way to a slightly more assertive stance.

“Could you tell us what they looked like?”

The men surged around Mr. Hundy once more, but he seemed entranced by the camera. “Well,” he said, “they wasn’t from around here. They was … dark.”

“Dark?”

They now were tugging him down the steps, and he glanced back over his shoulder, as if sharing a confidence. “Arabs,” he said. “You know.”

Liz Ocavello, behind her glasses and her big anchorwoman hairdo, accepted this disclosure so blandly that I thought I’d heard it wrong. “Thank you, Mr. Hundy,” she said, turning away, as Mr. Hundy and his friends disappeared down the steps. “This is Liz Ocavello at the Hampden County Courthouse.”

“Thanks, Liz,” the newscaster said cheerily, swiveling in his chair.

“Wait,” said Camilla. “Did he say what I thought he said?”

“What?”

“
Arabs?
He said Bunny got in a car with some
Arabs?
”

“In a related development,” the anchorman said, “area churches have joined hands in a prayer effort for the missing boy. According to Reverend A. K. Poole of First Lutheran, several churches in the tri-state area, including First Baptist, First Methodist, Blessed Sacrament and Assembly of God, have offered up their—”

“I wonder what this mechanic of yours is up to, Henry,” said Francis.

Henry lit a cigarette. He had smoked it halfway down before he said: “Did they ask you anything about Arabs, Charles?”

“No.”

“But they just said on television that Hundy’s not dealing with the FBI,” Camilla said.

“We don’t know that.”

“You don’t think it’s all some kind of setup?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

The picture on the set had changed. A thin, well-groomed woman in her fifties—Chanel cardigan, pearls at the neckline, hair brushed into a stiff, shoulder-length flip—was talking, in a nasal voice which was oddly familiar.

“Yes,” she said; where had I heard that voice before? “The people of Hampden are ever so kind. When we arrived at our hotel, late yesterday afternoon, the concierge was waiting for—”

“Concierge,” said Francis, disgusted. “They don’t have a concierge at the Coachlight Inn.”

I studied this woman with new interest. “That’s Bunny’s mother?”

“That’s right,” said Henry. “I keep forgetting. You haven’t met her.”

She was a slight woman, corded and freckled around the neck the way women of that age and disposition often are; she bore little resemblance to Bunny but her hair and eyes were the same color as his and she had his nose: a tiny, sharp, inquisitive nose which harmonized perfectly with the rest of her features but had always looked slightly incongruous on Bunny, stuck as it was like an afterthought in the middle of his large, blunt face. Her manner was haughty and distracted. “Oh,” she said, twisting a ring on her finger, “we’ve had a deluge, indeed, from all over the country. Cards, calls, the most glorious flowers—”

“Do they have her doped up or something?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she doesn’t seem very upset, does she?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Corcoran reflectively, “of course, we’re all just out of our
minds
, really. And I certainly hope that no mother will ever have to endure what I have for the past few nights. But the weather does seem to be breaking, and we’ve met so many lovely people, and the local merchants have all been generous in so many little ways.…”

“Actually,” said Henry, when the station cut to a commercial, “she photographs rather well, doesn’t she?”

“She looks like a tough customer.”

“She’s from Hell,” Charles said drunkenly.

“Oh, she’s not that bad,” said Francis.

“You just say that because she kisses up to you all the time,” Charles said. “Because of your mother and stuff.”

“Kiss up? What are you talking about? Mrs. Corcoran doesn’t
kiss up
to me.”

“She’s awful,” Charles said. “It’s a horrible thing to tell your kids that money’s the only thing in the world, but it’s a disgrace to work for it. Then toss ’em out without a penny. She never gave Bunny one red—”

“That’s Mr. Corcoran’s fault, too,” said Camilla.

“Well, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I just never met such a bunch of greedy, shallow people. You look at them and think, oh, what a tasteful, attractive family but they’re just a bunch of
zeros
, like something from an ad. They’ve got this room in their house,” Charles said, turning to me, “called the Gucci Room.”

“What?”

“Well, they painted it with a dado, sort of, those awful Gucci stripes. It was in all kinds of magazines.
House Beautiful
had it in some ridiculous article they did on Whimsy in Decorating or some absurd idea—you know, where they tell you to paint a giant lobster or something on your bedroom ceiling and it’s supposed to be very witty and attractive.” He lit a cigarette. “I mean, that’s exactly the kind of people
they
are,” he said. “All surface. Bunny was the best of them by a long shot but even he—”

“I hate Gucci,” said Francis.

“Do you?” said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. “Really? I think it’s rather grand.”

“Come on, Henry.”

“Well, it’s so expensive, but it’s so ugly too, isn’t it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.”

“I don’t see what you think is grand about that.”

“Anything is grand if it’s done on a large enough scale,” said Henry.

I was walking home that night, paying no attention to where I was going, when a large, sulky fellow approached me near the apple trees in front of Putnam House. He said: “Are you Richard Papen?”

I stopped, looked at him, said that I was.

To my astonishment, he punched me in the face, and I fell backward in the snow with a thump that knocked me breathless.

“Stay away from Mona!” he shouted at me. “If you go near her again, I’ll kill you. You understand me?”

Too stunned to reply, I stared up at him. He kicked me in the ribs, hard, and then trudged sullenly away—footsteps crunching through the snow, a slamming door.

I looked up at the stars. They seemed very far away. Finally, I struggled to my feet—there was a sharp pain in my ribs, but nothing seemed broken—and limped home in the dark.

I woke late the next morning. My eye hurt when I rolled on my cheek. I lay there for a while, blinking in the bright sun, as confused details of the previous night floated back to me like a dream; then I reached for my watch on the night table and saw
that it was late, almost noon, and why had no one been by to get me?

I got up, and as I did my reflection rose to meet me, head-on in the opposite mirror; it stopped and stared—hair on end, mouth agog in idiotic astonishment—like a comic book character konked on the head with an anvil, chaplet of stars and birdies twittering about the brow. Most startling of all, a splendid dark cartoon of a black eye was stamped in a ring on my eye socket, in the richest inks of Tyrian, chartreuse, and plum.

I brushed my teeth, dressed, and hurried outside, where the first familiar person I spotted was Julian on his way up to the Lyceum.

He drew back from me in innocent, Chaplinesque surprise. “Goodness,” he said, “what happened to you?”

“Have you heard anything this morning?”

“Why, no,” he said, looking at me curiously. “That eye. You look as if you were in a barroom brawl.”

Any other time I would have been too embarrassed to tell him the truth, but I was so sick of lying that I had an urge to come clean, on this small matter at least. So I told him what had happened.

I was surprised at his reaction. “So it
was
a brawl,” he said, with childish delight. “How
thrilling
. Are you in love with her?”