1975 - Night of the Juggler Read Online Free PDF

automatically exempted him from service, and despite a high draft number, which mathematically excluded him from any chance of conscription.
    But Buddy Boyd had ignored his mother’s injunctions to stay in college and had died unspectacularly but with great finality in a two-truck collision during his boot training at Fort Riley, Kansas. At first, Barbara had been a rock of determination and strength. She had packed off Buddy’s clothes and cameras and butterfly collections to Army hospitals, and she had converted his two rooms, which were directly above Luther Boyd’s library, into a ballet suite for Kate and her friends, complete with mirrors and bars and Degas prints. But after the first year, something insidious and virulent eroded her resolution and confidence.
    She began to question her son’s death and then her husband’s life. She questioned his decisions, his values, his code of honor, which was the very core of Luther Boyd’s existence. She had come to believe that Boyd’s feverish preoccupation (her phrase) with weapons and falconry and hunting and killing had created an atmosphere that was like a stench of death in their home, and in this noisome air her son had sickened and died. How could the son of Colonel Luther Boyd decide not to go to war? Hating it, despising it, fearing it, loathing the guns and the killing. Buddy had nonetheless embraced it with his young life rather than risk Colonel Luther Boyd’s disapproval.
    It wasn’t that way, Boyd thought bitterly. He simply was what he was, and there was no way to change that. Barbara could change, but he couldn’t. She could slip into the oblivion of drinks at dusk, she could exercise her grief in these spasms of neurotic indulgence, but there were no such anodynes or escape for Colonel Luther Boyd. He had been bred to take it, to clamp his teeth against any cry of pain or loss, leaving the possibly annealing tears to women and children and cowards.
    The front doorbell echoed through the silent apartment. Luther Boyd walked through the corridor and living room and opened the door. Mr. Brennan, the uniformed lobby attendant, stood in the outer hallway.
    Behind him the elevator doors were open.
    “This just came in special delivery, Mr. Boyd,” Mr. Brennan said, handing Boyd a neatly wrapped package about the size of a deck of playing cards. Luther Boyd took the package but didn’t glance at it; his eyes were fixed hard and straight at Mr. Brennan.
    “Did Kate go outside with Harry Lauder?”
    “You’d better believe she didn’t, Mr. Boyd,” Mr. Brennan said. “She’s waiting right in the lobby for me to come down and keep an eye on her.”
    As a young man Mr. Brennan had been a welterweight contender with the ring name of Kid Irish, and at sixty-four he was still in excellent physical condition and would have dearly relished the opportunity to deck any bastard who’d lay a finger on Kate Boyd.
    “Well, fine,” Luther Boyd said. “And thanks.”
    He closed the door and unwrapped the package. His fingers were a bit clumsy because he recognized Barbara’s handwriting on the heavy brown paper. The package contained a slim cartridge of electronic tape and a note from Barbara.
    The note read:
     
I can’t ever explain anything to you, because I know you’re waiting for me to finish so you can point out in your logical, precise manner how wrong I am. But you do deserve an explanation. And so does poor, dear Kate. I’ve put down some of my feelings on this tape. Whether they “explain” anything, I’m not sure. But please believe that I have tried to be honest.
     
    There was no signature. Luther Boyd stood uncertainly for a moment or so in the dimly lighted living room, tossing the slender cartridge up and down gently in the palm of his hand. At last he came to a decision which gave him very little pleasure. He sighed and walked back to the den, where a tape recorder rested on his desk alongside a neat stack of unanswered