The Call to Iowa

He went to the library at noon, and Pike would not look at him.

The old man sat behind the oak counter with a stack of returned books before him, stamping them one by one with a rubber stamp. Thunk. The sound was dull and flat in the high quiet room. His glasses had slid to the end of his nose. His white head was bent so low that Cassian could see only the crown of it and the trembling of the hand that held the stamp.

"Mr. Pike."

Thunk.

"I need the phone. Just five minutes. I'll pay whatever you want."

The stamp stopped.

"I don't have one."

"Mr. Pike—"

"I don't have one." The old man's voice was low and strained. His eyes darted past Cassian's shoulder, toward the stacks, the doors, the arched window high in the wall. "You shouldn't be here, boy. They're everywhere. The Deacon was in this morning. Silas Ward has been in three times today. They ask me questions. They ask me, did he come. Did he speak. Did he borrow anything."

"What did you say?"

"I said no." He swallowed. "I said no, and no, and no."

"Then give me one."

"I can't." It was a whisper, but it cracked. Pike put the stamp down with both hands, like a man setting down a burden. "Go away. Please. If they see you here, they'll take me out of this room, and I have a... I have a..." His mouth worked. "Go to your class."

Cassian looked at him for a long moment.

Then he turned and went.

…

The seventh bell rang at last.

He lay on his back in the dark, in his own bed, and listened to it die. DONG... DONG... The lamps in the corridor went out. The cold came in around the door. The hymn rose from the floor, as it did every night, and the four boys in the room lay rigid under their blankets, listening, hearing the same song he heard, each one afraid for a different reason.

He waited an hour.

Then, very quietly, he sat up.

He had made up his mind that afternoon, somewhere between the library door and the classroom. He had no cloak, no card, no pass. He had been stripped of every protection the Society could give. Any other boy would have lain there till morning, shaking.

But he thought of the thing in the corridor, in the first week. The way it had bowed.

It knows me.

It won't hurt me.

He put on his boots. He crossed the floor on silent feet, stepping over the board that creaked, and eased the door open. The hallway lay before him, black and cold. He stood on the threshold with his hand on the frame.

The old terror was there, waiting. It rose in his chest like a cold fist. Forty rooms. Forty held breaths. The whole dark building leaning toward the boy who had stepped across the line.

He took a step.

And nothing happened.

The cold didn't deepen. The shadows didn't move. He stood in the corridor with his breath smoking in the air, and the hymn throbbed under his feet like a pulse, and nothing came to look at him. He walked the length of the dormitory and no door opened. He crossed the cloister and no hand reached from the dark. Rain pattered on the flags. The great black bulk of the chapel loomed against the sky, and from its slits the faint red light shone out, and the song poured down the hill on the wind.

He walked through the middle of it.

It wasn't courage. He knew that. It was something stranger, a strange cold knowledge settling in him like a stone: he was not one of the ones who could be taken. Whatever walked the school at night, whatever hunted the boys behind their doors, it had looked at him once and bowed. He could walk through the whole dark valley with his hands in his pockets, and nothing would stop him.

He didn't know whether to be proud or sick.

…

The library door was unlocked.

It swung inward on well-oiled hinges. The reading room beyond was black. High up, the arched windows showed a gray smear of sky; below, the stacks stood like silent giants. He stood a moment in the doorway, listening. Dust. Old paper. The faint tick of a radiator.

Then, from the far end of the room, a yellow glow.

The desk lamp. The old man's counter, in the corner. The lamp burned low behind a stack of ledgers, and its light made a small pool on the floor. As Cassian came closer, he saw the drawer.

It was open.

The bottom drawer of the oak desk stood a few inches ajar, lined with black felt. Inside it lay a single flip phone. Black. Cheap. A pale blue glow showed at the edge of its screen. It lay there on the felt, as though set down in haste.

Cassian stared at it.

He lifted his head. Across the room, beyond the pool of lamplight, a figure sat at one of the long reading tables with his back turned. A hunched gray form in a brown vest. A white head bent over an open book. He did not stir. He did not look round. His shoulders were rigid.

He was reading, very intently, a page he did not turn.

He's pretending not to see.

Cassian took the phone.

It was warm from the old man's pocket.

…

He didn't dial the hospital.

He had meant to. He'd told himself so on the walk across the cloister. But when his fingers closed on the keypad, they went, of their own accord, to a different number. One he hadn't dialed in two months. One he'd known since he was five years old, written on a card on the refrigerator door with a magnet shaped like a pig.

Ottley, Iowa.

It rang six times.

He almost hung up. His thumb was on the button. Then the line clicked, and a voice growled on the other end, hoarse and slurred, thick with beer.

"Yeah?"

Everything in him went small.

He had not realized, until that moment, how clearly he remembered the sound. The wet rasp. The drag on the vowels. The way the word yeah came out as if from a long way down in a barrel. His hand was shaking so hard the phone rattled against his ear.

"Dad."

Silence. Then a grunt. Then a long, slow, wet exhale.

"Who's this?"

"It's Cassian."

"Cassian." The name was tasted, turned over. The voice sharpened a little. "Well. Look who it is. The little prince." A clink of glass. "What do you want?"

"I need you to come and get me."

"What?"

"Please." It came out cracked. He swallowed it down. "Dad. I know you don't want me. I know you're angry. I know I embarrassed you. But something's wrong here. Something's really wrong. It's not a school. They, there's a, they do things. At night. They hurt kids. And I think they're going to... I think they're going to ask me to..." He stopped. He couldn't say it. "I'll work. I'll pay you back. I'll do anything. I just need you to come get me. Please. Please, Dad."

The line went quiet.

He heard the hum of the connection. He heard a clock ticking, somewhere in the kitchen, the old clock over the stove. He heard, faintly, a bottle being set on a table.

And then a sound that he did not expect at all.

His father laughed.

It was low and soft, almost fond. It rolled out of the earpiece and into Cassian's skull, a long slow chuckle, as of a man who has been told a good joke.

"Oh, son," said Edward Hale.

"Dad—"

"Oh, you poor dumb kid." Another chuckle. "You don't get it, do you? You still don't get it."

"Get what?"

"I did my part."

The words came softly, with great patience, as to a child. "I did my part, Cassian. Hank came with the paper, and I signed it, and I put you on the bus. And what do you think I got for that? You think I got tuition?"

Cassian's mouth had gone dry.

"I got a policeman," said Edward. "I got Roy Burnell. You remember Roy. At the hospital. With his little book." The voice was warm, almost tender. "I'd hurt your mother pretty bad that night, boy. Pretty bad. They don't let you walk away from that. Not in Iowa. Not in any state. A man goes to prison for what I did. For years."

"You said it was an accident."

"I said what Roy told me to say." A long swallow. "And Roy drew a line in his book, and it went away. Like it never happened. A man doesn't get that for free. Somebody's got to pay. And what do you think they wanted for it?"

The room tilted.

"They wanted you," Edward said.

"No."

"Sure they did. Hank said so. He said, there's a boy with the right hands. And I said, hell, take him. He's no use to me. Not even sure he's mine." He laughed again. "So I signed. And they buried it. And everybody ate."

"Dad—"

"I'm not coming to get you, Cassian." The voice went flat. All the humor drained out of it. What was left was the old Edward, the hard, ugly, drunken thing that lived at the bottom of the bottle. "I'm not coming. You hear me? I made a deal. A man keeps his word. You stay there. You do what they say. You're theirs now."

"Please..."

"Stay put, boy. Don't call here again."

The line clicked.

…

Cassian stood in the dark with the phone against his ear.

The tone buzzed in his skull. A long flat monotone. He did not move. He did not breathe. Beside him, the lamp burned on, in its small yellow pool, and the dust turned slowly in the light.

I got a policeman.

They wanted you.

He had known. Of course he had known. He had stood at the gate and seen Hank's yellow fingers on his father's shoulder. He had said it out loud, to Silas, in the Council office: Edward didn't just give me away. He sold me. But it was one thing to guess. It was another to hear it, in that warm, wet voice, with the clink of a bottle behind it.

He thought, quite calmly: He's sitting at the kitchen table. In his undershirt. With the radio on. And he's not even sorry.

He put the phone back in the drawer.

He did it carefully, with both hands. He laid it on the black felt. He didn't close the drawer. He stood looking down at it, and his reflection swam in the dark glass of the nearest lamp, and it was the face of a stranger.

Behind him, in the shadows, a chair creaked.

"I'm sorry, boy."

The old man had not turned. He sat with his back to the room, his shoulders bowed, his hands flat on the open book. He spoke very low, to the page, and his voice shook.

"I'm so sorry."

Cassian looked at the stooped gray back for a long time.

Then he went out into the rain.