Read Online The Book of Kills by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online Page B

gave an impatient sigh and then said to Roger, “Would you like coffee?”
    “Please. Not for me.”
    “I want coffee,” the presumed Orion said, glaring at her.
    “Then I’ll have some too,” Roger said cheerfully. He had a hunch that Orion had not told his wife of the demise of his academic life. This seemed an advantage of some sort, he wasn’t sure why.
    “So you know Ranke?” his host said when they were alone.
    “I’m Roger Knight.” Roger rocked forward and extended his hand.
    “Orion Plant.” They shook hands. “So you know old Ranke?”
    “I was reminded of something he once told me about things that have been happening on campus.”
    “What things?”
    “Silly things, by and large. I didn’t see it myself, but I understand someone dressed as an Indian brave made himself conspicuous during halftime.”
    “I heard about that.”
    “You weren’t at the game?”
    “I never go.” Roger had met members of that fraction of Notre Dame people who professed never to follow any university sport, never to have seen a game. But it was not on principle with Orion. “How’s a graduate student supposed to afford a ticket?”
    “I suppose the stipend is small.”
    Orion looked thoughtfully at him. “What exactly did Professor Ranke say about me that brought you out on a day like this?”
    “It is terrible weather. Totally different from Saturday. I don’t suppose any one would run around half clothed on a day like today.”
    “You seem fascinated by that.”
    “Actually, it was merely a catalyst. Not unlike the wedding at the log chapel a few weeks ago.”
    “What was that?”
    “You don’t know?”
    He might just as well have denied hearing of the halftime incident. If anything, the disrupted, or at least postponed, wedding, received more attention. Certainly student attention. Perhaps they imagined their own future weddings made a pawn of by someone’s idea of fun. Roger described the scene, tendentiously.
    “Dressing up and demonstrating is one thing, depriving someone forcibly of their freedom quite another. I say nothing of the sacrilege.”
    “But think of the point of it! They were protesting what was done to the Native Americans who occupied this land long before any white man came.”
    “Professor Ranke told me you had become quite knowledgeable about all that.”
    “It’s a kind of hobby, only tangential to my dissertation.”
    “Then you think the demonstrators have a case?”
    “I was there, man. I was one of them.”
    “The leader?”
    “They wouldn’t have known the facts if I hadn’t told them. How could anyone know the facts and not want to do something about it?”
    Mrs. Plant came in and Roger was introduced formally. She brought the coffee in mugs, black, and, having sat, asked, “Do you take anything with it?”
    “This is fine.”
    “We always drink it black.”
    “Coffee. One of the white man’s contributions to the continent.”
    “And tobacco is the Indian’s gift.” Orion pulled out somecigarettes and lit one defiantly. Marcia got hold of the package before he put it back in his pocket, took one, and waited for him to light it. Finally she lit it herself.
    “In this case, the Indian giver is being asked to take it back.”
    “I’ve quit,” Orion said. “I know I can. But I choose to smoke.”
    “He did quit,” Marcia said in awed tones. “I never could.”
    “We’ve been talking about incidents on behalf of Indians that have taken place on campus lately,” Roger said.
    “Never heard of them.”
    Orion looked at her. “Of course you did.”
    “I did not.”
    “Are you a student, too?” Roger asked.
    “I work on campus.”
    When Orion did speak of the way the university had acquired its land, it was a hopelessly garbled version. Perhaps deliberately so. After his visit to Whelan, Roger would scarcely have given Orion a passing mark on his presentation.
    The battery in his cart was low and Roger regretted not recharging it while he talked