day working on the plan and thinking of everything else they could do to improve the enrollment before school started again in September. When they were through, they figured that if everything went right, they could pick up ten or eleven new students instead of the five Nan had predicted. “That’s all there is, there ain’t no more,” he announced. “But it’s better than nothing.”
“That’s right,” Nan agreed. “Better than nothing.”
WHEN FRED GOT back to his office at five minutes to six, Ms. Rice was gone. Five minutes later, right at six o’clock as planned, Alan Travelers, the board chair, showed up. He was in his fifties, slightly taller than Fred, spare in body, pale skinned, with short, gray hair. He wore a dark business suit that even now, at the end of the day, was unwrinkled, as if he’d just put it on.
He didn’t let Fred begin until he’d had his say. “Fred, I was about to call you this morning until my secretary reminded me we were going to meet instead. Just to welcome you. On your first day. No agenda. Just to say once again that I am delighted that you are our new head. Well, this is much better, face to face.”
“Alan, thanks,” Fred said, already feeling better.
“You’re the kind of guy who will give it all he’s got. That’s why we’re so delighted.”
“Thanks. You can count on that.” Fred pointed to the chair where Karen Benjamin had sat that morning—it seemed like days ago!—and took the chair facing Alan.
“By the way, Fred, Mavis Ericksen dropped in today,” Alan began.
“She did?”
“She’s really concerned about that Saffire woman, you know.”
“I know. She dropped in to my office too.”
“I know she did. What did you tell her?”
“I told her I’d look into it.”
Alan nodded his head.
“This is my call, Alan.”
“I know it is. I just wanted you to know there’s a lot of heat involved in this one.”
“There’s a lot more in what I’m about to tell you,” Fred said. Then he gave Alan the news.
After Fred finished, Alan sat very still, his face even paler. “Six hundred and seventy-five?” he asked at last. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Positive.” Fred started to hand Alan the papers, Vincent’s numbers and his own.
Alan put his hands up, shook his head. He didn’t need to read them. “How in the world could we have fouled up so badly?” he murmured. He wasn’t asking Fred; he was looking at the ceiling.
“He was the business manager,” Fred offered, but Alan shook his head, refusing the excuse. Now Fred liked him even more. “I believed him too,” Fred went on.
“Of course you did! Why wouldn’t you? You weren’t even here yet,” Alan exclaimed. Then after a pause he added, “The deal’s off if you want it to be.”
“I don’t understand,” Fred said. Alan was looking hard at him, searching his face, and then it dawned on him what his board chair was getting at.
“You signed a contract thinking the situation was very different from what it is,” Alan said mildly. “I’m not dishonorable enough to hold you to it.”
“But I want this!” Fred blurted.
“Think about it,” Alan insisted. “You owe it to yourself. You can tell me in the morning,” and Fred was taken by surprise. Out of nowhere came this turning point! Now he was suddenly imagining himself backing out the door of this office, Alan’s eyes still on him. He could feel the relief; he was floating, breathing easy in an enormous space. But the feeling only lasted an instant, and then he was overwhelmed by huge regret at throwing away his treasure. He imagined begging to be allowed to change his mind and come back.
“I’m here,” he said. “No way I’m going away.”
“I thought that’s what you’d say.” Alan was smiling now.
“If there comes a reason I should quit, I’ll recognize it,” Fred said.
But Alan paid no attention to that remark. Instead he was making plans. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he announced. “Executive committee meeting tomorrow. Noon sharp. We’ll hold it at Milton Perkins’s club, as usual, and he can buy us lunch, as usual. I’ll call each of them tonight and tell them to be there, no matter what.”
“You going to tell them what it’s about?”
“Nope. Why ruin their sleep? They’ll find out when you tell them, and we’ll go from there.”
“Yeah,” said Fred, managing a grin, “why ruin their sleep.”
Alan was standing now, shaking Fred’s hand. “We’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ve got the right guy at the helm.” Then he was out the door.
BY THE TIME Fred arrived at the head’s house he realized he had had a booming headache for hours. He went through the house to the back, where he knew that Gail would be gardening in the evening’s softening light.
“Hi,” she said, getting up from her kneeling to greet him. She took her gardening gloves off and reached a hand to him.
He kissed her cheek.
“How was your day?” she said.
“Don’t ask,” he said.
THREE
When Francis called Peggy from just east of the Mississippi River the day after Fred Kindler’s first day in office, she didn’t even ask where he was. He’d called to tell her how excited he was to be at the huge river, how much he wished she were with him so they could see it together, but she started right off before Francis hardly said a word. “He’s already here!” she exclaimed. “He showed up yesterday. What do you think about that?”
“Who?” Francis asked. “Who’s already there?”—as if he didn’t know.
Peggy left a freighted silence. Then, wearily: “Come on, Francis. You know who,” and now Francis wished he had traveled faster instead of spending four whole days at his college reunion in Ohio, two more at a friend’s house in Indiana, and then a whole week in Chicago easing his conscience at a math teachers’ conference. It didn’t occur to him that maybe he’d been keeping himself on a short leash by stopping so often so he could turn around and go back to the school before it was too late. Nor did it occur to him that the reason for his taking his school clothes with him, his blue button-down shirt, striped tie, sports coat, and slacks, wasn’t just the college reunion or the dinner at the end of the math conference; it was that these were his uniform, his identity. Instead, he thought that if he had escaped across the big divide of the Mississippi right away, he’d now be much further into the West and he wouldn’t care where Fred Kindler was. He’d have room to breathe.
“Marjorie
