| Blessed Are
The Peacemakers by Dolores Foster |
| Dolores Foster teaches college-level
English as a Second Language. She has taught 6th grade, lectured medical
professionals on Death and Dying, and packed cookies for Nabisco (unrelated
to her lecturing.) Almost a native Californian, she admits to being
a compulsive writer, rewriter, and reader. Blessed Are The
Peacemakers is her first novel. She is working
on a second. CHAPTER ONE Monday If I hadn’t shouted when I did, and Louis, a groundskeeper, hadn’t stopped when he did, I’d have met my untimely and inglorious end splayed against the tinted window of the administration building like a bug on a windshield. By a small, silent utility cart. I was doing my imitation of a deer caught in headlights when Louis, also apparently half blinded by the early morning sun glancing off the window, tumbled from the cart. Babbling in his native patois, he was all but incoherent. I caught enough words to send me sprinting back across the quad from whence he’d come. I zigged and zagged my way through the cluster of spindly eucalyptus trees and scattered lunch tables with the grace of a water buffalo - I've few illusions - lost my footing at the edge of the canyon and skidded on the slippery leaves down the short steep incline into the mottled shade where I almost stepped on her. My vision blurred. My mind went gray. I clung to the nearest tree while my stomach turned itself inside out. For some seconds no part of my body responded to the frantic message from my brain to get me out of there. I sucked deep gulps of air and waited a few seconds while my fine and gross muscles got it together. Then, still gulping like a landed fish, I plunged back up the slope heading for the nearest phone. In the distance, sirens began wailing. Faculty driving at a crawl up the gently winding tree-lined drive, eased to the side to let the campus patrol cars scream past. I reached the front door of the administration building as Gabby was coming out. "What is it?" Tall and early forties, in so many ways the kindest years, she was a head-turner. I offered a vague outline of the scene below suggesting she wait in the shade by the lunch tables while the peacekeepers earned their salaries. She looked at me with that Yeah, right! expression, accused me of being purposefully vague and melodramatic and took off across the moist grass. Her proper place as president of the university, she said, was at the scene of whatever it was I was being purposefully vague and melodramatic about. Beyond the lunch area, I took her hand to help her down the leaf-covered path into the narrow canyon bordering the eastern edge of our campus. Here, young eucalyptus trees, stripped naked, cowered in fear of the night when the fierce Santa Ana winds would return. I planted myself among them to block Gabby's view of the remains. "No earthly purpose can be served." I was adamant. "Bad enough you're here at all." "You may as well let me see, Josh. The imagination is always worse." "Not this time." I knew whereof I spoke and was gearing myself to be forceful, if necessary, when O'Riordan, Head of the Campus Police, half slid half loped down to join us. He took one look, paled, said, "God have mercy," and going down on one knee by the body crossed himself three times in quick succession. After a moment he stood, mumbled, "Sorry, mum," to Gabby and scrambled back up the canyon-side with an agility not often seen in a man of his age and girth. Ordinarily the Campus Police have little more to do than write parking tickets and keep peace among the well-behaved students. Now, in a manic burst of speed, they were cordoning off the canyon. I’m not an early riser. It’s something I avoid whenever possible. But this morning I’d leapt from bed and rushed to the campus before the day got underway, eager to tell her that Tommy was here. Gabby and Gran being the only ones in all the world who love my brother as much as I. In the shade of the canyon, with Gabby leaning lightly against me, my eyes wanting badly to return to the young ravaged body half buried in the wreckage of last night's winds, I remained resolute. "Tell me what to be afraid of, Josh." "We'll both know soon enough. More than we want to know, I imagine." I pressed her head to my shoulder and, burying my fingers deep in her thick hair, reassured her with wisdom typical of me: "It'll be all right, hon." Utterly inane. Not three feet away lay the torn remains of the body of a young woman, torso, thighs, limbs ripped open and bloody, one breast shredded, face chewed beyond recognition, long blonde hair spread across a raggedy blue silk blouse. The near silence and whatever was left of our nervous systems was rent by piercing shrieks of multiple sirens now close by. For the hearing challenged, flashing red and blue lights announced the arrival of two black and whites with deputies, a fire truck with paramedics and an assortment of miscellaneous official-looking vehicles. Behind them, in an unmarked sedan, came two men from the Sheriff's Office, each fulfilling my out-of-date image of FBI agents: white short sleeved shirts with soft button-down collars, narrow dark ties, military haircuts. Both men were tall, lean, straight and muscular, one graying, with deep squint lines that hadn't tanned, the other blond, looking too young to shave. Asking our names for his small spiral notebook, the young blond one, after his initial glance at the body, cleared his throat repeatedly. "You found the uh body?" "One of our grounds keepers found it." "Name?" I gave him Louis' name, adding that he seemed to have gone. “Perhaps home,” I suggested. "Home?" "He was pretty well undone," I said. "More than pretty well.” "He just left?" "I don't know that for sure." My head had begun to throb. If Louis imagined our police to be anything like the Tontons Macoute, by whatever name, he'd barely escaped from, he was by now half way to Canada. The unreal scene became surrealistic. Officials circled each other in a curious minuet, mumbling, nodding, making notes in little spiral notebooks, speaking quietly into hand-held tape recorders, poking, hovering. We moved out of the way of the silent, balding man in glasses and bow tie videotaping everything in sight from an infinite number of angles. We might have trampled evidence, though certainly any thought of evidence had not crossed either of our minds. "That's the admin building." I pointed. "Tinted glass front. President O'Neill and I will be there if you’re sure we're not needed here." The older man was sure we weren't needed there "Right," the young man said, printing rapidly. Hand in hand, Gabby and I went back up the steep incline. Faculty members collecting in small silent groups on the bluff, despite the already seething sun, parted to let us pass. The campus police, polite but firm, had no trouble keeping everyone back, professors tending by nature to be obedient to police authority. Gabby vanished into her private bathroom. Desperate for caffeine, I started up Mr. Coffee. The aroma of freshly brewing coffee was so absurdly comforting I hovered, taking deep breaths, until it was ready. I filled my cup and crossed to the sliding glass doors behind Gabby's desk. Two hummingbirds were at the red feeder. Being a victim of truly heroic doubts, I’d had bad dreams for years, that invisible collection of fears suppressed during waking hours, arising from the possibility, make that probability, she'd meet someone, marry, be swept out of my life. Creating my own misery, a common human failing, I've worried that one silly for a couple decades. Why I didn’t allow myself to wonder why that had not yet happened, ironically, I chose not to wonder about at all. Without benefit of challenge, or even polite examination, I’d buried it beyond retrieval by my conscious mind for fear, I think, of allowing false hope to seep into any vital organ. Destiny knew what was best for me, I figured, ducking responsibility for my own actions or, more accurately, inaction. Fate being a convenient scapegoat. Catching a glimpse of Gabby on campus, she is striking of course but there's more to it than that, I and other men stop to watch her easy athletic stride, long leg muscles flowing with energy and challenge. There's something about her, something perhaps in the rhythm of her walk or her carriage, that grabs and holds the attention. She came out of the bathroom, poured herself a cup of coffee and headed for her over-sized chair behind her over-sized cherry-wood desk. An indulgence, she'd once assured me in an ingenuous tone that did little to contradict her demon grin, necessary for her emotional and psychological well-being. Loosely interpreted, she wanted an imposing physical barrier between her and the chancellor, a man of confused rectitude. "I want to go home and hide under the blankets till all this goes away." I wanted to go to her. "The natural tendency of all those born to be administrators," I said, not moving. "Anyhow, Chancellor Rogers would find you. Bet the ranch he won't stay around to deal with this." "Our very own Doppler shift." A comment so appropriate I almost laughed, but Gabby had buried her face in her hands. "Dear God," she said. I looked at her defenseless back feeling about as useful as a frog, except I can't even catch flies with my tongue. The low buzz of the intercom came to my rescue. Gabby put her hand on my forearm to stay me, though I'd made no move to go. "Cynthia will be swamped. Can you put your life on hold and help us out?" Anticipating the hundreds of excuses on the tip of my tongue, she added, "I need you, Josh. Moral support aside, we have a delicate, high profile mess on our hands. You know everything about the school I know and more," she paused. "I'm going to need someone on my side. Someone Rogers can't intimidate or fire." She was right. Chancellor Rogers held her responsible for everything from the daily weather to covert CIA activities in places we’ve never heard of. With little more than a passing thought to the four workshops I was scheduled to give, I nodded. In truth, a Staten Island tugboat couldn't have moved me. "Rogers is. . . ?" "On his way to San Diego to meet with an accreditation team. I've told Cynthia to page him, tell him to get his arse back here. All possible haste." Her words still hung in the air when the indispensable Cynthia announced the investigators. "Jensen and McCafferty," McCafferty repeated. He was the graying one. We shook hands all around. As the three of them sat around Gabby's desk, I eased from the men's direct line of vision to the comfortable leather couch along the half-wall within easy reach of Mr. Coffee. "The grounds man who found the body, do you know where he's likely to be found?" Grimacing, I offered Gabby an apologetic nearly imperceptible shrug that she couldn't possibly understand, then studied the toes of my loafers as though eager to get to know them better. Both investigators noted the exchange. Both, it turned out, were intelligent, courteous and, thank God, compassionate. Though then, of course, we had no inkling of what was to come. "My assistant, Cynthia, will get you Louis' address," Gabby told him. His notebook at the ready, Jensen asked me to recount what he called my part. I gave him the details in twenty-five words or fewer. Gabby asked the investigators about the torn - my word - condition of the girl. "Coyotes," was McCafferty's first guess. "Could have been a wild cat, even a bear. We've recent reports of all of them in this neighborhood." Swallowing hard again, Jensen turned away, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork in the Irish Sea. Gabby studied the distance between where she sat and the bathroom door. Instead of bolting for it, she asked if the animal or animals were likely to kill again. McCafferty thought not, adding that the girl probably hadn't been attacked on campus, had more likely been in the canyon when whatever it was got her. "We know it's a popular place for couples in search of privacy," McCafferty added. "Couples?" Gabby said, eyebrows drawn together. "Hardly a place anyone'd go alone, not in these winds, anyhow," Jensen said. "No," Gabby admitted almost reluctantly. That hadn't occurred to her. "It isn't, is it? This raises other questions." "We think so." No one followed up on that, not aloud. Neither investigator knew of other local incidents where coyotes or wildcats or bears had done this sort of thing. Both men inclined towards coyotes, they being the most plentiful scavengers in the hills we’d invaded but not yet conquered. Trabuco Canyon University nestles amid low hills about twenty minutes south of Disneyland and about ten inland from Newport Beach. We’re as far removed from eastern elitist campuses in life-style as in distance. Geographically, emotionally and politically, we sit in a hotbed of Conservative Republicanism, the birthplace of the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society, fertile fields for Buckley’s Young Americans for freedom. From this campus and other small first-rate universities will come the power wielders of the next generations, the golden girls and boys of the silver spoons and high school graduation BMWs, who glide through the yearly Comprehension Tests of Basic Skills with the same competent ease they take their drivers’ tests the day they turn sixteen. Some years back, at a propitious time in history, I deliberately wended my way westward into these comfortably insulated lives with credentials that included being the right color. In a spasm of political correctness they hired me, as the saying goes, without enthusiasm. Though far from the world I was born into, it was a world that, thanks to Tommy, I had been educated in and had for most of my life lived in.
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