Spooner Read Free Page A

their children’s schools and his
     stand against higher taxes to raise the salaries of teachers and other public workers, and liked his billboards and his short,
     snappy-looking wife, and he was elected again and again.
    His district was the entire state, a flat, dry rectangle of prairie and plains out in that part of the country that is all
     rectangles and plains, and occupied by farmers and ranchers and the salesmen in ties half a foot wide who followed them, selling
     them Oldsmobiles and John Deere tractors. Yet, in spite of the congressman’s prairie roots, and hers, Iris decided to have
     the body buried at sea. Perhaps because of his service in the navy—he’d won the Purple Heart, after all—or perhaps it was
     the expense. It was not the cheapest thing in the world to ship 360-odd pounds across the country, especially refrigerated,
     which in itself seemed like a ridiculous waste of money at this time of year. Iris had spent her twenties in the Great Depression
     and had seen hard times and was tight with a dollar.
    But whatever the reason she decided that her husband should be returned to the sea instead of the prairie, the point here
     is the way things happen—in this case, the end of the congressman and the beginning of Spooner—the long way around telling
     you that after a sparsely attended funeral, Toebox’s casket was driven to the naval station in South Philadelphia, and the
     next morning loaded on board the U.S.S.
Buck Whittemore
, a 2,800-ton Forrest Sherman–class destroyer under the command of Commander Calmer Ottosson, a polite, soft-spoken farm boy
     from South Dakota turned wunderkind at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, turned youngest commander in the United States
     Navy, and now, still polite and soft-spoken, plainly an officer on the fast track to the top.
    Except things morbid and unexpected happened one after another that day on the
Buck Whittemore
, and after that day, the only place Calmer Ottosson was going as far as the navy was concerned was back to wherever he came
     from, the sooner the better.
    And which accounts, indirectly, for how he became Spooner’s father.

FIVE
    C almer Ottosson had not received the coffin containing Rudolph Toebox gladly. The congressman came with reporters and photographers,
     for one thing, and a widow and a congressional aide and other congressmen and their congressional aides, and Calmer, who didn’t
     like on-board ceremonies in the first place, or, now that he thought it over, on-board politicians, resented the waste of
     money and time just to drop one over the side. In this way he was unlike most of his classmates back at Annapolis, who were
     drawn into the service by ceremony and/or the uniform itself.
    But then, Calmer was bare-bones itself. Except for physical-education classes, he’d had no social life at all at the academy,
     no girls, no card games, no sports, no fistfights, very little self-abuse. He was reclusive and self-reliant, never comfortable
     asking for anything, even the salt and pepper. His only authorized activity beyond the ordinary academic life of a midshipman
     was caring for the school’s mascot, Bill, a sweet, low-key angora goat whom he fed and groomed throughout his junior and senior
     years, and for whom he kept a secret, oddly romantic diary entitled
The Quiet Yearnings of Bill, a Castrated Goat
.
    He held himself to a short regimen of nightly calisthenics and taught himself to write with his feet. This foot writing was
     accomplished by holding a pencil between his second and third toes (counting from the inside out), and before he gave it up
     he could write in script or block letters and even turn the pencil around and erase his mistakes.
    He was a natural student with a tireless curiosity and could stay awake forty-eight hours and still think clearly over an
     exam. He played the piano and did square roots in his head, and could read sheet music and in some way hear it almost as if
     he were