himself saying to Sophie Green, Professor Harding is very grateful to you for agreeing to teach the class, and, of course, I am too. I’ll be happy to help you with it in any way I can.
As it usually did, Stall’s Good Angel flogged his Bad One back into its dark lair, and he decided to tell Harding the truth: Professor Green had offered, and he, Stall, was merely delivering her message.
President Connor came through the door like a . . . yes, by God, like a boxer answering the bell. Everybody stood, Mrs. B. behind her desk with a look of maternal affection for the president, and Stall in front of his chair and tugging at his sodden collar, with a look, he hoped, of proper respect. Connor tossed an old-fashioned panama at the hat tree in the corner (direct hit), saluted Mrs. Braithwaite smartly, and, as he passed, smacked Stall on the shoulder. Stall took this to mean, Follow me.
In the inner room, Connor went to his desk, opened a drawer, and stared down into it thoughtfully. Stall stood at attention, then at parade rest on the carpet in front of the desk. Connor sat, leaned forward with more energy than the move required, and dropped both hands flat onto the blotter with a sound like Stall’s mother using a mallet to tenderize a cheap cut of beef. “Whew,” Connor huffed, “tough meeting!”
Yes, Stall thought, that five iron to the tenth green, with the big pine leaning ominously over the bunker, is probably the toughest shot on the entire eighteen. But he only looked patiently, intelligently, inquisitively at his president.
“Hell of a day for news,” Connor muttered. He looked at Stall for confirmation.
Stall assumed he meant Jack Leaf’s unfortunate walk in the air, but that was yesterday. Well, Stall thought, we don’t hold this man to certain forms of precision. He’s busy. Stall’s confusion must have showed.
“What?” Connor said. “You haven’t heard?”
Stall could only stare, a new sheen of perspiration breaking out on his forehead.
Connor shook his head slowly, not, Stall hoped, at the English professor’s dullness. Then the president rose from his chair and reached into his inside coat pocket. Out came a copy of the Tallahassee Democrat. Connor spread the paper on the desktop, turned it to toward Stall, and waved him forward. The banner headline read: “McCarty Dies of Apparent Heart Attack. Johns Sworn in As Governor.”
Stall bent over the paper long enough to read a few lines about Charley Johns. The handsome and probably corrupt McCarty was now history. Johns would be a force. The article said:
Senate President Charley Johns swore to uphold the laws of the State of Florida and to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic this afternoon at 4:00 in the chambers of Florida Supreme Court Justice John R. Mathews, Sr., in front of legislators from both parties and his wife Thelma. A grief-stricken Mrs. Dan McCarty was also present in a gesture of goodwill to her husband’s successor. The State Capitol building was draped with black bunting, and flags hung at half-mast today in honor of the deceased thirty-first governor of Florida.
There was a grainy photo of Charley Johns, the former railroad conductor, rumored to be almost illiterate, who hailed from Bradford County, one of the most backward in the state. A place where the Klan marched in broad daylight.
When Stall looked up from the paper, Connor sat and folded his beefy arms across his chest. “It’s a shock, is it not?”
“Yes sir.” Stall backed up until his calves hit a chair and he sat in it.
Connor’s voice was suddenly full of emotion: “So, we lose one of our own, Professor Leaf, and the governor of our state in the space of two days.”
“Yes sir.” Stall shook his head in astonishment and sorrow. Seconds passed while Connor seemed to master his feelings.
“I called you in here this morning to thank you, Tom, for what you did yesterday.”
“Oh, well . . .” Christ, why hadn’t Stall prepared something to say? He had known there’d be mystery in this visit to the president’s office, but he’d also known that a simple thank you would be a part of it. He managed, “I only did what any man would do.”
Connor shook his head sadly. “I only wish that were true. What, uh, what caused you to be there just then, Tom?”
Stall told the story of the strange sound drifting through his window and how he had risen to it, as though to a voice calling him, and hurried to the place where the young coed had stood looking down at dead Jack Leaf.
“I understand that you covered the man with your coat?”
“Yes sir.”
“We’ll, uh, we’ll take care of the expense of—”
“Oh, no sir, that won’t be—”
Connor waved his hand as though such things were done as gentlemen did them. No need for further discussion. He cleared his throat and made a church and steeple of his hands.
Stall remembered Jack Leaf’s fingers curling into fists as though, from across the divide, he wanted to fight someone.
Connor said, “What do you think happened, Tom?”
“I think he jumped. One of the students saw it. She seemed like a credible kid. She said he just stepped out into the air.”
Connor shook his head again and his eyes widened as, Stall supposed, he pictured what Jack Leaf had done. He raised a hand to the side of his head and made a vague sign. “Was he . . . ?”
“No sir, I don’t think so. We weren’t close, but Jack always seemed as balanced as the next guy, if you know what I mean.”
Connor looked at Stall with the eyes of an attorney, a judge.
Stall continued: “Jack saw a lot of action in the war.”
Connor nodded sagely. “Ah.”
“It made him, I think, a little remote, more inclined to observe than to get involved.”
“You mean politically?”
“No sir. I mean just life. Jack was a spectator.” To say this, here, now, to this man, made Stall feel strange. Did he, Stall, resemble Jack Leaf? Stall had told no one, not even Maureen, about his theory of himself. Tom Stall, observer of life.
“So, Professor Leaf wasn’t involved in politics?”
“Not that I knew,” Stall said. Far from it. Jack considered politics the wasteland of scoundrels.
“We have to be careful about politics, Tom. Especially now.” Connor put his hand flat on the Tallahassee Democrat. On the grainy picture of Charley Johns’s redneck face. Connor looked at Stall for a long moment out of narrowed eyes. Eyes that said, You understand me, don’t you?
The mystery had commenced, but Stall was certain of three things: Harding and Connor had talked, this meeting was the beginning of Stall’s vetting for the chairmanship, and there was something in Connor’s mind about Jack Leaf, something he was not telling Tom Stall.
Florida was
