LITMIR.BIZ

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of you think this arrangement is unfair.”

      Stall’s authority in this matter was absolute. There was nothing any boy could do if he considered the thing unfair, but Stall thought it best to make the statement anyway. He’d have to work with these boys later on. He waited. No one spoke. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take questions about research methodologies if you have any.”

      There were no questions.

      “Good, then. Show up here next week with your papers in hand and we’ll consider the term finished. I’ll be available during regular office hours if you think of anything you need to discuss with me. And again, I’m very sorry about Professor Leaf, as I know you are too.”

      The students filed out, more or less satisfied, Stall thought. He waited as he always did for any double-backs, students who did not want to speak to him in front of their fellows. He was putting on his new coat when Martin Levy came back into the room. Levy was tall and still had some of a boy’s adolescent looseness in his joints. His brown hair was curly and close-cropped, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses that made him look a bit like pictures Stall had seen of Leon Trotsky. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt and tan slacks, and carried books under one arm. He was a good-looking boy in an attenuated, ascetic way. His dark-brown eyes burned at Stall.

      “Mr. Levy?” Stall expected the boy to apologize again. It did no student any good to get off on the wrong foot with the assistant chairman of the English Department.

      “I’m sorry, Dr. Stall . . .”

      “Don’t worry about—”

      “. . . but I don’t think you were straight with us about what happened to Professor Leaf.”

      Another interruption. And now an accusation. Are you calling me a liar? Stall started for the door. “I’m going to forget you said that, Levy, and I think before we talk again, you’d better reconsider your attitude.”

      “I only meant—”

      “Keep talking, and you’ll talk yourself right out of this department.”

      Stall left Martin Levy standing in the classroom.

      * * *

      The politics of Florida were simple, as Stall understood them. The state was halved, north and south. The north was called pork chop country because the counties there were small and their populations were sparse. Pork, of course, carried additional connotations, all of them apt. The state capital was in the north, in Tallahassee, and much of the political power was concentrated among the porkchoppers. The north was conservative, often radically so, and the south was liberal. Miami, with its Jewish population, retirees from the big Northeastern cities, many of them former members of trade unions, was the center of liberal politics. To say that there was warfare between north and south was to understate the case. Unfortunately (at least from Stall’s moderately liberal point of view), the north had won elections and had controlled the governor’s mansion and the legislature for most of the twentieth century. If any group with any clout would stand against the Johns Committee and for academic freedom and letting the universities govern themselves within reasonable limits, it would be the lambchoppers, the Jewish community of Miami. They, and sometimes the Miami Herald, would be the strongest voice against Charley Johns and his porkchopping pals in the legislature. This was only one of the reasons Stall had a soft spot in his heart for the Jewish students who made the 350-mile trip up from Miami to Gainesville. Another was that his Presbyterian minister father had instilled in his son the belief that the Jews were God’s chosen people. What they had been chosen for was a matter of endless debate.

      As Stall walked from Murphree Hall back to his office in Anderson, tendrils of regret crept into his mind. He’d been too hard on young Martin Levy. By Stall’s standards, the boy had been rude, but where Levy came from manners might be different. And it was entirely possible that Levy, a budding young English scholar, was steeped in the Jewish tradition of midrash, the kind of determined, even angry disputation over the finer points of biblical texts that was, arguably, the earliest form of literary criticism, predating even Aristotle and his Poetics. Stall shook his head as he walked and admonished himself: He’s just a boy. You’ll have to call him in and make this right.

      A man fell into step with Stall. “Talking to yourself, professor? I guess it’s true what they say about you intellectuals. Got your head in the clouds.”

      The words were mildly insulting, but they were spoken in a jovial, man-to-man tone. Stall turned to see the blond football player looming beside him, at least two inches taller than his six one. Stall stopped walking, and the big man did too. He faced Stall and extended a hand the size of baseball glove. “I’m Cy Tate. Good to meet you, Tom. Frank Vane recommends you highly.”

      Recommends me for what? Stall shook the big hand. “Well,” he said, “next time you see Frank, thank him for me. I’m pleased to have his high opinion . . .” Stall got lost in the syntax, “of me.”

      Cyrus Tate chuckled warmly. “You and Frank were army buddies, weren’t you?” The big man took a few steps, and when Stall didn’t follow, he stopped and turned back. His voice went low and serious like he was offering Stall a special deal on merchandise of uncertain provenance: “Let’s talk in your office. I think that’d be better, don’t you?”

      Better than what? Stall was losing patience. “No, let’s talk right here. I’m sure this will be brief.”

      “No, no, it won’t be.” Tate said the words thoughtfully, even kindly, again as though he were doing some kind of favor.

      Stall felt the worm of fear turn over in his stomach. “All right, my office then.” He took off striding toward Anderson Hall.

      Cyrus Tate caught up quickly and matched him stride for stride until they crossed the threshold of the small office. Stall sat behind his desk, trying to seem at ease. He considered putting his foot up on the lower drawer that he always pulled out for that purpose, but thought better of it.

      Tate took the chair in front of the desk that students usually occupied. He moved the chair so that it blocked the doorway. “Shall I close the door? This will be confidential.”

      Stall held his hands out, palms down in front of him. They were sweating. “I see no reason for that. As I said outside, this will be brief.”

      Tate was well dressed for an ex-cop. His gray summer suit was cut to fit, though his arms and shoulders stretched the material in ways that left no doubt of the power of his body. His silk tie was bright but conservative and, even Stall knew, expensive. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and carefully spread it open across his broad, flat chest and crossed his legs with a masculine ease that told Stall who owned this small space.

      He has the gift of ease, Stall thought. Few men have it. He’s ready for anything. And then Stall wondered if the man was carrying a weapon, if the powers conferred by the Johns Committee allowed him to strap on a gun. There were no obvious bulges, but an ex-cop would know how to wear a firearm without making it obvious.

      “So, you and Frank were pals in the war. He told me about how you two almost died in that field hospital, how you went to Paris later and had yourselves the time of your lives.”

      We had the time because we were alive, Stall thought, remembering how important it had seemed after he had risen from the hospital bed to do something with his youth. Hearing this man talk about that time, reducing it to the clichés a person might use to describe a vacation to the Grand Canyon, Stall felt anger light up his chest again as it had back in the classroom with the kid, Martin Levy. In the winter and spring of 1945, Stall and Frank Vane had been accidentally not killed, accidentally in beds next to each other in a field hospital, and accidentally in the same army truck that hauled fortunate men to Paris on three-day passes. They had been accidental friends for a time, and then they had lost each other. And now this—a big, powerful man named Tate with a badge and possibly a gun, telling Stall that Frank Vane recommended him highly.

      Tate took an envelope from his pocket and put it on Stall’s desk.

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