Brett shot me this quick, sidelong glance. The bit about the still, inner voice, by the way, is not original with me. I read about it in one of those inspirational creative writing manuals Wayne had lent me.
“God knows I’ve tried. For years I tortured myself. I must have started a dozen different books and ended up throwing them all in the fireplace.” Mercedes looked up for the first time, her eyes brimming with tears. “I suppose I’ve made my peace with all that. The way I’ve come to understand it, when it happens like it happened with Eat Your Wheaties, you are just the instrument. It’s like there’s a wind blowing through you.”
Again, that’s from the manual. I can’t recommend it too highly. If I remember right, the author is from some teacher’s college in Missouri. The title is The Wings of Prometheus.
“But how are we supposed to make ourselves the instrument of something?” Bryn said.
“You can begin by listening to your heart,” I said. “There are a few things I do know. Writing is not about cleverness. It’s not about proving how smart you are. You’re not going to be able to fake your way through this. For openers, I’d say, start telling the truth.”
Don’t get the idea that I’m illiterate. I’ve read books all my life. I loved Swiss Family Robinson. In my first couple of years of high school, before I dropped out and hit the streets with Barry, I had a couple of great English teachers who made us read all kinds of things—The Red Pony, Silas Marner, The Call of the Wild.
But what I was learning was that these were not titles that cut any ice with the hotshots I was running with. I was working like a son of a bitch to catch up. I swiped the tapes of these Lannan Literary Videos from the institute library and watched them at home when I was washing the dishes or brushing my teeth. They had great writers—Seamus Heaney, Carlos Fuentes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Andrei Vozesensky—reading from their work and giving their views on things. I just let it wash over me, picking up the lingo.
But nothing was as valuable as my time with Wayne. We spent hours together. I kept picking his brain, asking about little things I could say in class. He was more than happy to do it.
I guess he figured that after twenty-five years in the woods I was pretty clueless about how much the writing game had changed. Nowadays if you wanted to be an author, you didn’t just go out and write a book, you needed to get a whole gang of people to show you how to do it. Apparently there were now hundreds of these programs all over the country, and he filled me in on every one of them.
He took it all damn seriously. He spent a whole afternoon talking to me about why we all need stories and how they have the power to change our lives forever. I couldn’t have agreed more. I’d been telling stories all my life, but I guess I’d never realized until now what a noble calling it was.
It never fails. Every time you figure you got it knocked, something comes along to trip you up. This beautiful October afternoon, we were coming back from East Texas, where we’d been visiting an old lady whose grandfather had been one of the original oil tycoons. We stopped off at some 7-Eleven to use the restrooms. We were at the counter, buying Rex a Snickers bar, when Ramona went, “Hey, how about this?”
We all looked down and there in the magazine rack was the newest Time magazine. A little banner cut across the upper corner reading ten greatest novels of the twentieth century.
Of course she picked it up and started thumbing through it, looking for the article. The various turkey hunters and young amphetamine addicts in line behind us were getting restless, and Rex didn’t seem that happy either.
“Here it is,” she said. Rex acted as if he hadn’t heard, slapping the Snickers bar on the counter and handing the Indian attendant two dollars. “Wouldn’t you know it,” Ramona said. I peeked over her shoulder.
The list had been put together by some Bloom guy, with little photographs of the jacket covers. There was Eat Your Wheaties, right between Cancer Ward and Ulysses.
A farmer with attitude bellied past us and slammed his beef jerky and Fanta orange soda down next to the cash register. Ramona turned to show the magazine to Rex. “Isn’t this something?” she said.
Rex was trying to tear open the wrapper of his Snickers bar with his teeth and having a hard time of it. He spat out a corner of brown plastic. “Congratulations,” he said, sounding like a kid who’d just discovered his turtle had died.
“Ahh,” I said, “these magazines, what do they know? Now, if I’d made the Best Dressed List, that would have been something.”
Rex did not speak again the rest of the way home.
My inspirational speech to the class may have seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but it created a couple of problems. First of all, it had obviously been a mistake confessing to them that I felt like a fraud, because Mercedes, Bryn, and LaTasha came in to see me over the next few days to tell me that they felt like frauds too. There were more than a few tears shed, but with a little TLC I was able to get the girls back on their feet.
The second problem was dicier. Mel was such a contrary little son of a bitch, I should have realized that whatever I told the class to do, he was going to do the opposite. If I told them to forget about trying to be clever, it was only going to make him try harder to be a laugh riot. If I told them to write from the heart, the schmuck was sure to write as if he had ice water running in his veins.
The next story he brought in was the journal of an American woman astronaut, stranded in space with a chimpanzee. They’ve been out there for three months. They’re able to survive by cannibalism, gnawing away at the corpses of her three Russian crewmates who died when their capsule was hit by a meteorite.
The woman and the chimp have become lovers and for a fifteen-page story there was an astonishing amount of sexual activity. The two of them have invented their own language and have come up with new names for various body parts. A breast is an Albert and the male organ is a fudge.
The story created an uproar. Mercedes found it repulsive. Bryn thought it was juvenile. Brett hated the ham-handedness of the satire and LaTasha admitted she’d been too embarrassed to finish reading the thing. Nick thought it was too derivative of some Eastern European with a lot of consonants in his name I’d never heard of.
Mel sat still as a lizard on a leaf, the only sign of emotion the tinge of red at the top of his ears. It was hard to imagine that he would have been happy about the reactions he was getting, but who could tell? Everything the kid did seemed calculated to hack people off.
I’d had enough of this mess. I leaned forward and clapped my palms flat on the table. “Well, good,” I said. “Sounds like you’ve got them all going today, huh, Mel? Any last thoughts?”
I had hoped to end the discussion, but when I looked up, what did I see but Dominique’s hand in the air. If there was one person I didn’t want to call on, it was Dominique, but it didn’t seem as if I had much choice.
“Yes?” I said.
“I just wanted to say that that was the most misogynistic story I’ve ever read.” Bryn, LaTasha, and Mercedes nodded in agreement. Brett, sitting next to Dominique, eyes closed as if deep in thought, had his arm on the back of her chair and seemed to be caressing her shoulder with his fingertips. “Not only was it blatantly degrading to women, I had no idea what the writer was going for. Was I supposed to be shocked? Was it supposed to be funny? If it was, the jokes were lost on me.”
The others may not have gotten to Mel, but Dominique did. The way his nostrils were twitching, he looked like a horse about to kick down its stall. “How about you?” he said. He glanced over at me. “Were the jokes lost on you?”
“Not lost exactly,” I said.
He ran a thumbnail across his front teeth. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m not saying—”
“No, no, you don’t need to apologize.” His bandanna had gone limp under the barrage of criticism. Resting just an inch above his eyebrows, it made him look like Captain Hook on a very bad
day. “But I want to be honest too. When I came here, I had the crazy idea that there’d be this community of serious artists. I thought people would be getting after it, you know what I mean? Maybe I was being naïve. But I don’t see how what we’re doing in here is worth spit. Doing these stupid exercises and bullshitting each other about how great our work is. I’ll level with you. I don’t think I’ve learned one thing in here. As far as I’m concerned, we might as well just give Rex Schoeninger his money back. And I’m not afraid to tell him that.”
Alarm raced through the room like an invisible mouse. They may all have been artists, but they were not happy about the idea of anyone messing with their money. Jaw set, Mel shoved his bandanna a little higher up on his forehead, ready to go to war.
“Anything else?” I said.
“No.”
I surveyed the faces around the table. Red as a beet, Bryn leaned forward on her elbows. LaTasha sucked at the tip of her pen. Nick looked as if he’d just swallowed a lime. Even the easygoing Chester was teed off and ready to come to my defense, a finger in the air.
I may never have run a classroom before, but I knew enough to know that I couldn’t let anyone else do my dirty work. This was all on me. The last thing I needed was this jerk going to Rex Schoeninger.
“I suppose we could sit around and discuss this,” I said, “but that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of fun. I’ll tell you what. How about I let you go home a little early today? But, Mel, I’d like you to stick around for a minute, okay?”
If Mel was fazed by this, he didn’t show it. I sat stone-faced while the other students packed up their backpacks. As Dominique pushed up from her chair, she slid her copy of Mel’s story the length of the table. Mel did not reach out to stop it and it fluttered to the floor.
The students filed past me. Brett even patted me on the shoulder as if I was some grieving widow. When they were gone, I got up and closed the door. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to play this. It wasn’t as if I could send snot-face home with a note to his parents.
When I turned to face him, he was retrieving Dominique’s copy of his manuscript from the floor. “So that was quite a little show you put on,” I said.
“I guess it was.”
I leaned forward on a chair, giving him the evil eye. The table was so long it made me feel like I was talking to someone at the other end of a bowling alley. “I can’t believe you let those guys get under your skin like that. Really, it’s a goddamn shame.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re the most talented guy in the class.”
For a second I thought the poor guy was going to choke. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, I’m not. Whatever the gene is that you need to make it in this crazy racket of ours, you’ve got it, kid. You haven’t put it together yet, not by a long shot. That story you turned in was crap. But when we start talking sentences, when we start talking paragraphs, when we start talking the way a mind works, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
I did all this with a straight face. Mel ran his thumb over the corner of his mouth, still skeptical. “Then how come—”
“How could I say something like that in front of the others? It would make them feel like throwing in the towel.”
Someone had left an empty water bottle on the table. I picked it up and tossed it in the wastebasket, giving Mel a little time to let everything sink in. I almost felt sorry for the kid. He had no chance, not really. If what I was saying was true, this was the greatest day of his life. How was he going to say no to that?
“But what should I do?” he said.
“You can stop acting like an idiot, for one thing. And forget all that stuff about trying to find a community of artists, whatever the hell that is, and forget about whether or not I can teach you anything, because I probably can’t. You’ve got work to do.”
I went to the window and opened it a crack. Brett and Dominique walked arm in arm down the sidewalk in front of the institute, Nick bouncing alongside, gesturing wildly.
“Also, while you’re at it,” I said, “you might want to give this sex-in-space thing a rest.”
“But—”
“Do you ever write other kinds of things?”
“I keep a journal. Or I did this summer.”
“What kind of journal?”
“I was working on a road crew up in Oregon. I’d get up every morning and write for an hour or so, just to keep my hand in. But, God, I couldn’t bring that stuff into class.” He gaze wavered. “You wouldn’t be willing to take a look at it, would you?”
“I suppose I could do that,” I said.
“It’s not like it’s polished or anything.”
“I understand,” I said. Sometimes it would be so great to be a real writer. I would love to be able to describe to you the look in that boy’s eyes—the hope, the confusion, the fear. You would have thought I’d just offered him an all-expenses-paid trip to Honolulu.
“Can I say something?” he said.
“Sure.”
“I think it’s great that Schoeninger gives us these big bucks, but, seriously, his books are pretty much crap. You’ve got it all over him.”
“Hey, get out of here,” I said. “I’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Ten
Later that afternoon I drove over to Rex’s. He’d called to let me know that he was curious about how the students were doing, and I’d promised to bring a few of their pieces by, even though I wasn’t sure how great an idea that was.
Traffic was horrible and it must have been six-thirty by the time I got there. A big Suburban and an Ozarka delivery truck were parked out in front of his house, so I had to park a good thirty yards up the street.
I was about to open my door when I saw Dranka in Rex’s driveway, getting out of her car. She dropped down, out of sight behind the front of the maroon Civette. After half a minute, she popped up again, looking totally stricken.
Her hands flew to her hair. She pounded the hood with her fist and then, turning away, covered her mouth with her forearm. The woman was beside herself.
Frantic, she scanned the street, but I guess she missed me, tucked behind the Ozarka truck the way I was. I had no idea what was going on. I hated flat tires as much as the next guy, but it wasn’t as if they were the end of the world.
I watched as she went into the garage and came back with a slick black trash bag. She surveyed the street a second time before disappearing behind the front fender. I leaned forward on the steering wheel, trying to figure out what she was up to. Long shadows stretched across parched lawns. The neighborhood might as well have been deserted. It was that time in the evening when everyone was eating supper.
She stood up again and lugged the trash bag around the side of the car, heading back to the garage. Whatever was in the bag wasn’t big, but it had a little heft to it. Like a cabbage, say.
When Rex came out of the house it stopped her in her tracks. He didn’t see her at first. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “Mingo! Mingo!” I could hear him even through the closed windows of my car.
When he did turn and see her, it took him by surprise. They talked back and forth for a couple of minutes. She was a sly one, old Dranka, trying to sneak the bag around behind her hip, bit by bit. I had no clue what they were saying, but I was enjoying it. I liked the idea of Dranka squirming. I liked it a lot.
Rex walked out on the lawn and called down the street. “Mingo! Mingo!”
Once his back was turned, Dranka took a couple of steps toward the trash bin in the garage. But his back wasn’t turned for long. He spun around and spoke sharply to her.
Maybe he wanted her help. He clearly wanted something, the way he was getting agitated, the way he was pointing at her with a long bony finger.
She held the bag out at her side and gestured as if to say, Just give me a second. But then the bag moved. It wasn’t much, just a twitch, a quiver, like a fish rippling the surface of a lake.
Thirty yards away, I might have thought I’d just imagined it, but Rex saw it too.
He stared at her dumbly for several seconds and then began striding across the lawn. She backed into the garage, putting the bag all the way behind her. But she tripped over a rake and tried to run for it. Rex lunged for the bag and caught Dranka’s wrist.
They pulled and jerked, spun around, both of them hollering. She was so much stronger than he was, it looked as if she was about to sling him into the side of the house. It was a terrible thing to see. I should have jumped out and broken the whole thing up, but I couldn’t move.
Rex lost his balance finally and fell on his side. Dranka had no choice but to let go of the bag. She put her hands over her face as he opened it. He didn’t have it open for long. He turned his head away, like a man about to be sick.
Dranka stood over him, trying to explain, pointing back at the driveway. I got out of my car just as Ramona came out of the house. Rex, propped up on one arm, chest heaving, stared at the grass. Only when Dranka offered him a hand up did he start to yell at her.
“You’re fired, do you understand? I never want to see you in this house again!”
She pleaded with him. She pressed her hands together under her chin like a little girl praying. She grabbed his arm. None of it did any good. He just kept shouting as he pushed to his knees and then careened all the way up.
Dranka finally turned and stumbled off to her car. Rex followed her, still yelling things, until Ramona ran across the lawn to grab him. I stood in the middle of the street, amazed. Dranka yanked open the door of the Civette, shouting back at him.
“You’ll be sorry for this, Mr. Schoeninger!”
“Get out of here!” he shouted. “You think you scare me? Don’t be stupid!”
Red-faced, she glared at him across the roof of her car. “You think I am stupid? I am not as stupid as you think. Dranka knows things about you, you have no idea what I know. You will pay, I promise, you will pay.” She ducked into the Civette, backed out of the driveway, and sped off.
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