LITMIR.BIZ

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you would expect of Jack and Sarah Leaf. Stall pulled into the driveway, waved his good intentions to Maureen who had pulled in behind him, and got Sarah Leaf out of the car.

      On the way to the front door, she said, “I guess Maddie’s gone home. I don’t see her car.”

      Well, Stall thought, somebody’s driving drunk.

      He unlocked the front door and followed Sarah Leaf inside. The house was as he remembered it, except for the faint smell of bourbon and the casseroles piled on the kitchen counter. Sarah pointed at them. “Too many for the fridge. I had to leave them out. Would you like to take some home?”

      “No, but thanks. Look, Sarah, are you gonna to be all right? Maybe you should come home with us. Spend the night and we can talk more if you want to.”

      “Talk?” She gave him a bleak look. “What good is talk, Tom? Jack and I talked forever and it never did us any good.”

      All Stall could do was shrug. English teachers were men of words, and most of them thought talking did some good.

      Sarah Leaf opened a drawer beside the kitchen stove and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to him. “The medical examiner’s office gave me Jack’s clothes. They found this in his coat pocket. Go ahead, open it.”

      The envelope held a subpoena from the Johns Committee. The document commanded Jack Leaf to appear on August 25, 1958, to testify under oath before the Committee. Stall knew the answer, but he had to ask the question: “Why did they want to talk with Jack?”

      “They don’t like perverts. Jack was . . . I suppose the common term is homosexual. Jack preferred to call himself gay. It’s a British word, he told me. But really, Jack was . . . hard to define. He liked me . . . sometimes.” She looked up into Stall’s eyes like a little girl would look at her father. “And I loved him.”

      She went to the dining room table where two gin rummy hands were still laid out beside a pile of pennies. She picked up the bottle of Old Overholt and brought it back to the kitchen where she poured two straight shots and handed one to Stall. He pictured Maureen waiting outside. She was too polite to honk the horn, though she wouldn’t hesitate to come inside to see what was keeping her husband in Sarah Leaf’s house. When Stall didn’t take the glass from Sarah’s hand, she pushed it against his chest and let it go. He caught it, and she touched hers to his and drank. Stall drank with her. She looked into his eyes.

      “Jack liked me if I lay on my stomach.” She turned around and looked at him over her shoulder. “See this ass? Doesn’t it look a bit like a man’s?”

      Stall could barely choke the words out through the sudden lump in this throat: “It’s a very fine ass, Sarah. It’s an admirable ass.”

      “Jack went both ways, Tom. Some men are like that, and some women too, they tell me. His view of it was that the rest of us, who can’t go both ways, are missing out on, well, half the good things in life.”

      She finished her drink and put her fingers gently under the bottom of his glass and raised it to his lips, making him finish too. Like you’d do with a baby, Stall thought. And when it comes to talking like this, that’s what I am.

      “After I got used to everything I learned about Jack, I was just glad to have half of him. Oh, I worried about him. Some of the things he did, some of the men he met, were maybe a little dangerous, but I knew he was as careful as he could be, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me if he could absolutely help it.”

      Careful? Stall’s throat burned from the whiskey, his stomach rolled with too much of it. Careful in a bus station?

      “May I take this with me?” He held up the subpoena between himself and Sarah Leaf, where it had the desired effect. Her eyes closed, and when they opened again, she was finished telling the truth. “Sure,” she said. “I don’t think it matters to anyone now. Do you?”

      Oh, it matters, thought Stall. If the newspapers get ahold of it, it will matter to you and your children.

      Even if the Committee moved on to other business, the papers would want to know why a man had killed himself. They wouldn’t stop spilling ink until they found out. And the reporters would become the tools of the Committee whether they liked it or not. Florida’s sodomy laws were clear. A man could go to jail for having sex with another man. He could go to jail for addressing his own wife from behind. But it didn’t have to go that far. A committee of the state legislature in open session could ruin a man in minutes and the press would cover every word of it.

      Stall said quietly, “Yes, I think it matters.” And you’ll think so too, in the morning. He tucked the subpoena into his pocket. “I’ll take good care of this. Don’t worry about it.”

      When he got to the car, Maureen moved from behind the wheel.

      “No,” he said, “you drive.”

      This was rare. She raised her eyebrows. “You two were in there for . . . ?”

      “She’s not in very good shape right now.”

      “So, did you loosen her clothing or something?”

      He gave her their come off it look and they both shook their heads.

      Maureen started the car. “Jeez, the things that happen when you least expect, right?”

      “Right.” He leaned his head back on the seat and put his hand on the subpoena in his pocket. He knew who would want to see it.

      * * *

      At home, the Gainesville Sun was waiting for them on the doorstep. Wearily, Stall picked it up and went into the kitchen to spread it on the table. He looked at the headline with dread: “UF Professor’s Death Thought to Be Suicide.”

      Another article was headlined: “Committee Subpoenas UF Professors in Classrooms, Students Look On.” And another: “Political Science Professor Targeted for Alleged Subversive Statements in Classroom. Students Read Communist Manifesto.”

      Stall sat at his dining room table and let his head fall into his hands. Christ, the world was ending. What were these people doing to the university he loved? Didn’t they know they were running through a village of thatched houses waving burning torches? Were they too drunk with power and hatred to know it? They could destroy in a few months something that had taken a thousand years to build. Stall’s face burned with anguish and shame when he realized that now he would have to worry about the economic theories and the political affiliations, however whimsical, of the writers he asked students to read. Christ, Wallace Stevens, hadn’t he flirted with communism in his youth? If a political science prof was in trouble for teaching Marx—Marx who was wrong about almost everything but whose work was foundational to modern political philosophy—then what might happen to an English teacher who taught D.H. Lawrence?

      Stall felt Maureen’s hands come to rest on his shoulders. “I’d offer you a drink to relax you, but you’ve had enough.”

      Stall muttered, “More than enough.” Of a lot of things. He reached up and rested a hand on hers. “But not of you,” he said. “You’re a brick.”

      “What, you mean I’m hard and red and good for stacking?”

      “No, I mean solid. You know what I mean.” She knew.

      “I’m your Lady Brett,” she said, “and you’re my Jake. Wait, that doesn’t quite work. You’ve still got your . . .”

      “Last time I looked. Let’s go upstairs and use it.”

      “After you, my bullfighter, my man.”

      EIGHT

      The country club had put its boardroom at President Connor’s disposal, and that was where Margaret Braithwaite had instructed Stall to wait while Connor finished his morning round. “He should be done by eleven o’clock, but don’t worry

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