by James Boice
—Say a what now?
—It has to be something you’ve never told anybody.
—I can’t think of one.
—Don’t think about it, just let it come out.
—What was yours?
Garrett says, —Nuh-uh, I can’t tell you that, dude. You weren’t here. You have to be here. That’s the point. To be here. We’re here for each other. Get it?
Lee climbs the ladder. He spreads his arms out wide. He knees shake. His fingertips tingle. He is giggling, giddy. —My name is Lee Fisher! he cries out in a wobbly voice. —And...
He does not think, he lets it come out.
—... and I might seem like just a normal regular kind of guy. But I’m just as rich as all of you.
His souls bursts from his chest. And he lets himself fall into the arms of these strangers. They set him upright on his feet. It feels good—nobody seems to care about what he said, and he makes eye contact, and nobody looks away.
—Nice! says Garrett, putting an arm around Lee and walking off with him. —Hey, man, that Asian girl? Sam? She’s into you.
—No way.
—She totally is. She told me. I think you should go for it. There’s a party tonight. She’ll be there.
He looks over at Sam, imagining her and him in love; he is smiling, unable to stop, his face aching it is so unused to smiling, his whole body tingling it is so unaccustomed to being happy.
But later when Lee arrives at the party, Garrett has Sam cornered and is talking her ear off, oblivious to how bored she clearly is. Lee keeps going up to them and standing there like a moron, waiting for Garrett to take a hint and get lost, but Garrett never does, he just pretends to be oblivious to Lee’s presence and keeps on talking to Sam, who keeps exchanging knowing looks with Lee. Save me from him! she seems to be saying. He tries, he really does, but it’s no use, and after a while he can barely keep his eyes open any longer, it’s been such a long day, and he decides the hell with this and leaves, waving good-bye to Sam, who waves back.
Hours later when the birds outside are beginning to chirp, Garrett returns to the room. He is very drunk, wakes Lee up.
—It was sideways, he says, —just like they say.
—What was? Lee sits up. —What was?
Garrett cackles. —I’m just kidding.
Lee says, —What the hell was that, man?
—What was what?
—Why did you tell me she liked me?
—I said that?
—Yeah, you said that.
—Huh, I don’t remember.
—You lied to me.
—Hey, if there was a misunderstanding—
—There wasn’t. You lied.
—This is stupid. I don’t care about some girl. If you like her, I’ll stay out of the way. I mean it. She’s yours. I’d much rather we get along.
—Okay, Lee says, thinking about it. —Thank you.
Garrett shrugs. —Hey, something I wanted to ask you, by the way: Are you really super rich?
Lee does not answer.
Garrett says, —Because we were talking about it and—
—Y’all were talking about me?
—Just how funny you were. It was funny. What you said was funny. Lee does not believe him but Garrett says, —So are you?
Lee thinks about it and says, —Maybe like money-wise, yeah, I guess.
Garrett laughs and says, —Like money-wise. Where’d you say you were from again?
—Nowhere. You wouldn’t know it. Garrett, listen, can you maybe not talk about that. I shouldn’t have said it. I was just nervous. I feel so daggone dumb, opening my big mouth like that.
Garrett laughs. —So daggone dumb. I like you, dude. You’re all right.
—Because that’s not who I am.
—I know it’s not. Don’t worry about it.
He lets Garrett convince him to go with gaggles of dorm mates to brunch in the East Village and he manages not to embarrass himself. He goes with Sam to record stores and head shops and clothing stores; she picks out a pair of crazy blue sunglasses that she says look good on him so he starts wearing them. She shows him how to get a fake ID from Chinatown, and he goes along with groups of other freshmen to bars, he gets drunk, pukes, is a part of things. Garrett brings girls back to the room, and Lee lies in bed listening but only for signs of rape so he can intervene if necessary and protect them. He thinks of Sam—a girl like her wouldn’t do what these girls are doing. He goes to parties in the dorm where Sam is, the girls are dressed like professional women in their thirties and the boys like people on MTV. They talk about politics and things—they’re all liberal, of course—and he sits in a chair in the corner just listening to all the dumb liberal things they say, biting his tongue lest he say something that makes everybody mad, not understanding their jokes, feeling like everyone is making fun of him, though he keeps telling himself it’s not true and that they are not even talking about him, and sometimes he finds himself in the middle of four or five people standing around talking and he’ll screw up the courage to say something, and not only will they not be outraged by what he says and not think he’s dumb and not make fun of him, but sometimes they even agree with what he says and seem to like him, or at least not mind his being there, and sometimes when he is talking to Sam he can tell she wants him to kiss her but he never can, he never can. Not yet.
One night after a party where he spent the whole time looking for Sam who never showed, he returns to his room and there she is, just leaving. —Howdy, he says.
—Oh hey, Lee.
—Good timing.
—What do you mean?
—You probably thought you missed me but here I am.
She does not seem to know what he’s talking about and then Garrett opens the door and he is sweaty, his face is red. And then Lee can see the sweat on Sam’s upper lip, the dampness around her hairline, and he turns and leaves without saying anything and throws away the stupid blue sunglasses. Over the following days, he tries to forget all about Sam and stops talking to Garrett, who keeps asking him, —What’s wrong? What’s wrong? as if he does not know, as if he doesn’t just want to hear Lee say it.
Later that week Lee goes into his room thinking Garrett won’t be there because he has class, but he is there and Sam is there and they’re on Lee’s bed, kissing. Garrett has his hand up her shirt and his tongue practically down into her stomach. Humiliated and furious but somehow managing to stay calm, he asks them to please get off his bed and Garrett tells him to give him ten more minutes, but Lee loses control and cries out hell no, what the hell’s wrong with his own bed, or maybe he’s broken the springs on it? And Garrett plays dumb, so Lee tells Sam about Garrett, all his girls, how he does not care about women, does not respect them, he will do it with anyone, he’d stick it in the gas pipe of a car and probably has, can’t she see that Garrett is a disease-ridden creep who is just using her, can’t she see that she means nothing to Garrett but everything to Lee? Garrett tells him to leave, but why should he have to leave? She’s the one who should leave. He tells her to go. —Just go on ahead and get out of here, he says. —Because you broke my heart. You broke it. But then he changes his mind and says, —Know what? I will leave. You don’t want a nice guy who respects you, what you want is an ape, so why don’t you stay and enjoy your ape.
He leaves, stays away for hours, and when he returns Garrett and Sam are gone but right away he knows someone has been through his things. There is a letter on his desk. Mr. Fisher; it says. Concerns. Anonymous reports. The welfare and safety of our students. Report to administration first thing in the morning, it says. Lee realizes he has not breathed for some time and inhales. Not safe here. Not safe. Opens the door, pokes his head out quickly, the way they trained him back home on close-encounter warfare. All clear. Closes the door, locks it. Takes off his backpack, places it on the desk, opens it. He’d brought his gun with him today on impulse and good thing. It looks back up at him from inside the backpack like a stowaway pet. He
zips up the backpack again but not before throwing more things into it: a change of clothes, rations, water. Essential. Then he hurries back out into the darkening city, a man alone in a hostile, soulless metropolis. Wanted. An outlaw. Head down and hurrying, Lee checks into a hotel, paying cash and giving a fake name.
That night he stays up sitting on the floor of his room against the wall opposite the front door, the gun in his hand. It is silent out in the hallway. The streets too, even with their car horns and screams, are silent. Now and again there is an airplane passing thousands and thousands of feet overhead, making slow-motion noise, like a giant marble rolling overhead along an intergalactic wooden track that spirals down, down, ending atop the hotel, crashing down into the center of his skull. In a million years they will find him beneath the rubble, encased in mud. But even with the airplanes it is silent. He points the gun at the door, cocks the hammer. Places his finger on the trigger. He inhales, blood filling with oxygen, life. He exhales, pulling the trigger.
Click.
Click. Click.
He focuses on the sights, not the target behind the sights. Inhale, exhale: click. He’s missing to the right. Don’t get down on yourself... try tightening up that right hand, kind of push against the gun with it, kind of brace against it on that side. Inhale, exhale. Click. That’s it. That’s it, Lee. Beautiful. Outstanding.
You and that gun were made for each other.
He reports to the office. —Lee Fisher here to see the Ministry of Truth, he tells the lady. She does not understand. He shows her the letter. Her mouth tightens. —Right, she says. She shows him a seat to sit in while he waits to be thrown out of school. Why wouldn’t they throw him out? What is he worth to them, to anybody?
But the meeting in the conference room consists of people talking about him as if he is not there. He understands some of them are lawyers and that some of the lawyers are his lawyers. His lawyers talk about all his family has done for the school, they talk about money, buildings. Throughout the meeting, a man with a buzz cut and university polo shirt glares at Lee across the table. It is decided that they will not throw Lee out of school, but he must leave student housing. They say, —How does that sound to you, Lee? and he says, —Maybe I don’t want to stay here, maybe I just want to leave this place altogether and never come back. I could if I want. And they say, —Do you want to do that? And Lee says no, he doesn’t, he’ll stay.
The matter is resolved and everyone stands up and pushes in their chairs and Lee does the same. At the door, Buzz Cut grabs Lee’s wrist to stop him. He has yellow teeth, almost orange like a beaver’s. His eyes are blue and almost unblinking. Pulls something out of his pocket and pries Lee’s fingers open and places it into his palm and folds his fingers closed again and holds them shut.
—Where’d you hide it? Huh?
Lee pulls his arm away and does not look at what is in his hand until he is outside in the open air. A rag. The one he uses to clean the gun.
—Don’t touch me, Lee says out loud to no one. He heads back to his hotel room.
He thinks of his father. He misses him very much. A good man, his father. He can see that now. A man’s man. Capable and principled and willing to fight and die for his country’s values. A patriot. They are not like that here. Here they have no values, here they believe in nothing except maybe behaving yourself, fitting in with the crowd. They are willing to fight and die for nothing. You cannot trust people like that. That is not how to be. His father is how to be. How lucky to be raised by him and not Garrett’s father, because what values does Garrett have? He’s a fraud, a backstabber. Slime. Everyone here is slime. Everyone but Lee Fisher.
Moves into an apartment. Uses family money. Just a little something, Fisher men do not need much, just a little peace and space to be one’s self and believe the right things. It is small and quiet in a building with closed-circuit cameras and a doorman. In that apartment he has nothing but a mattress on the floor and a little television and a radio on which he plays loudly and proudly his hilarious music—Ha, ha, Garrett! Ho ho!—and his few clothes and a big US flag he had to order from a catalog because apparently the one thing you cannot find in New York City is a daggone American flag. And he has the gun. Keeps it now under his pillow. Eats McDonald’s proudly, defiantly. Every day, McDonald’s. Two times a day. Sometimes three. He luxuriates in each bite, moaning with pleasure. And, except for the night when he hears something outside his door—voices or footsteps of a stranger, someone rattling the knob trying to get in—except for that night, Lee Fisher sleeps like the dead.
Begins wearing a cowboy hat, the kind they wear back home on the mountain. Orders it from the same place he got the flag. Great big kiss-my-ass hat. Goes to class wearing it on his head, the other students make fun of him for it behind his back. They cannot comprehend the hat. A cowboy hat is not in line with the rules they follow, it does not gibe with their picture of the world, so they mock him, roll their eyes. What a fool! they say. The irony!
His history professor complains to the Ministry of Truth about him always interrupting his lectures to point out the entrenched left-wing distortions and institutionalized intellectual provincialism—for example that the War of Northern Aggression—or, as it’s known on the coasts, the Civil War—was about anything other than states’ rights. The rule is to not challenge, but Lee challenges. He will not sit back and be mindless. The history professor asks him to stop coming to class until he is ready to be a nondisruptive presence and Lee laughs in his face and says never.
They move him out of that history class and into another one, so he drops history, replaces it with physics. The physics professor is a Soviet who too resents Lee Fisher and his cowboy hat and his self-determination. He is not surprised to find so much in common between college professors and a Soviet. The Soviet dismisses everything Lee says in class, returns his papers with no comments or evidence of having read them aside from the letter D on top, does everything he can to make Lee feel like a third-class citizen. On top of that the Soviet is always calling out the wrong chapter to read for the next class. The quiz is always on a whole other chapter and Lee invariably fails it. The other students have no problem with the dysfunction, apparently, for they all mysteriously pass the quizzes. When they offer their comments the Soviet takes their comments seriously. Their papers are returned covered in ink, wrinkled and coffee stained from three readings, four readings. The Soviet, Lee surmises, may be some sort of foreign saboteur, sent by the KGB to wreak havoc on the physics educations of American students, to give Mother Russia a future scientific and military advantage. And the other students are all part of a cheating operation but are excluding Lee because of who he is and where he comes from, because he has the gall to be different, to think for himself in this day and age.
He fails yet another quiz and has had enough. Asks himself who he is, what kind of man. He stands up, closes the textbook, and, feeling the hard grip of the gun against his ribs in its underarm holster beneath his shirt, struts down to the front of the lecture hall where the demented old man hunches over his desk, gathering his papers.
—Howdy, Lee says, friendly, and tells him some ideas he has for improving the class, one of which is assigning the correct chapters to read for the quizzes from now on.
The Soviet looks up at Lee. He looks at him like he has no idea who he is or where he appeared from. He has only one eye and it takes in Lee’s hat, his boots, his jeans, his double-breasted work shirt, and Lee can see the laughter in his eye, the derision. The eye settles on the textbook Lee carries in his hand and the Soviet says, —What is that book?
—It’s your textbook, Lee explains patiently, raising his voice in case he is deaf too. —The one you wrote. The one we use for your class.
The Soviet looks astonished. Does he even remember writing it? Does he even know his own name? Then the Soviet chuckles, shakes his head, and says, —Let me explain something to you: you are idiot.
Lee says, —Now hold on—
&n
bsp; —It’s okay, the Soviet says, cutting him off, —you are young, you supposed to be idiot. That is why you are here. To learn from me how to stop being idiot.
Lee’s father steps beside Lee. A big, strong, warm presence. Ring his bell, son, he says. Go on.
—Idiot? Lee says. —Now let me explain something to you. We might not be fancy where I come from, but when we write a textbook you bet your ass we assign the right chapters to read.
—Where you come from. Where you come from is past. Past does not matter. What matters is now. Now and future.
Lee takes a breath to keep his composure. —Where I come from ain’t no past.
—It is prison.
—It ain’t a prison either. And I don’t appreciate you referring to my heritage that way. Who do you think you are? What’s your heritage? Communism? Mass murder?
The professor is coming around the table now. He steps up to Lee, sticks his finger into Lee’s chest, inches from the grip of the gun. He is six or seven inches taller than Lee, forty or fifty pounds heavier. He could step on Lee. He could crush him into the carpet and leave him for the janitor to scrub out. Lee looks up into the Soviet’s dark hairy nostrils.
—You are not the biggest fool I have had for student, says the Soviet, —but you are close. The Soviet’s breath steams Lee’s face. —Do you know what number one important thing is? Not just in science but in life?
—Yes, I do, Lee says. —Access to firearms.
—No! Number one important thing is to never be tied to past! To never think you are right just because you follow past! To never put anything—anything—above inquiry, curiosity! To never make assumption about people! To never be afraid of unknown! Because the unknown is life! That is life! And the past is death! It is prison!