by Adam Resnick
I was starting to feel less frightened of Mr. Ulsh, despite an uptick in his menacing taunts. In class I’d sit still and quietly, a cobra in the body of a kid, focusing my gaze at his desk drawers.
Place the panther eye among the victim’s possessions for forty-eight hours.
Ah, what a perfect little hidey-hole for a perfect little gift—a special apple for the teacher, nesting in silence among his other . . . possessions. I’d clap a hand over my mouth to smother a stray giggle. One afternoon, as I was exiting class, he jabbed at the last day on the calendar and remarked in that tone of his, “We’re getting close, wonder boy. Is it coming?” I nodded meekly, but inside my head, I replied, “Oh, it’s coming, Flipper, it’s coming . . .”
It was a clear, unseasonably warm Saturday in January, one of those days when everyone comments that it feels like spring and I stay locked in my room with the shades down. I was lying in bed, playing with a little plastic Radio Shack slot machine I’d gotten for Christmas. It ran on two double A batteries and was about the size of a deck of cards. You pushed a button to make the reels spin until they exhausted themselves and gave out. Sometimes three cherries lined up unevenly, which was considered a “win.” Pathetically simple and unsophisticated, it felt like a kindred spirit. It required no skill, paid out nothing, and provided no sense of accomplishment. I played it for hours. Suddenly I heard something skid under my door. I glanced over and saw a small padded Jiffy envelope with a tiny bulge in the middle. The slot machine stopped spinning: three panther eyes.
“More crap?” my mother called out from the other side of the door. “What now?”
“Nothing!” I yelled as I jumped up to retrieve the package. “Just something for school!”
“Whatever it is, don’t make a mess!”
I heard her walk off.
Don’t make a mess. Oh, sweet, adorable Joyce. If only you knew.
The Jiffy envelope was a bit lacking in presentation, but I assumed it was meant to throw off nosy postal inspectors who confiscated the organs of wild animals transported for the express purpose of devil-related shit. My hands were tingling as I yanked the pull tab, opening an ugly gash in the package, which sent a cloud of gray fibrous dust into the air. The intensity of the moment ebbed slightly when I realized my acquisition was wrapped in the Sunday comics section of the Sacramento Bee (featuring a predictably lame Beetle Bailey strip). I tore it away, uncovering a plastic sandwich bag that contained a balled-up Scott paper towel with a tulip pattern. I had to give it to M.M.E.—they really knew how to throw off those fucking postal inspectors. Extracting the tulip ball, I watched in amazement as it came to life and bloomed in my hand, revealing the star of the show: an almond-shaped dried-out white thing that looked like a piece of chalk. With a monkey’s curiosity, I tapped it gently with my fingernail and it promptly broke in half. Even with a 63 average in science, I was fairly certain it wasn’t a panther’s eye. Inside the sandwich bag, I noticed a little strip of paper, the kind you find in a fortune cookie. It read: For best results, anoint charm with Conquering Glory Oil, available separately.
The urgent communiqué I swiftly sent off to Hercules went something like this:
Dear M.M.E.:
I just got this panther eye I ordered from you and I am very PISSED. The eye came broken and does not look like a REAL “panther eye” and you might have sent me something else by mistake because I did not want a CHARM! Please send me a real panther eye by airmail RIGHT AWAY. I need it very quickly which is why I ordered it in the first place! This looks like a piece of chalk and I did not break it, it broke by itself!! Please send me the real panther eye as soon as you read my letter and I don’t know what Conquering Glory Oil is because you didn’t say I needed it anyway, so send the Conquering Glory Oil too which would be the right thing because I need that and it’s the mistake YOU made and I didn’t!!!
Adam Resnick
P.S. Please send right away by AIRMAIL after you read this letter!!!
P.S.S. (and I could write a letter to Anton LaVey and tell him if I don’t get it!)
By now Ulsh’s campaign of harassment was escalating to unprecedented heights. I could barely take three steps from my desk without hearing, “How’s the masterpiece coming along, Edison?” or “Counting the seconds, Goldilocks.” All the mind-fucking was taking a toll. The end of the month was closing in and there was nothing from Hercules. Never once, though, did I consider even attempting the assignment. It was a fool’s errand, and by this point, I was on the verge of an emotional swan dive. I was losing sleep, and during the day I felt weak and disoriented. My jaw ached when I chewed food, and I developed a tic, constantly opening and closing my mouth to test it. Once, I noticed Pebbles watching me from across the cafeteria with a look of disgust. He’d obviously told her everything, making me out to be more horrible than I actually was. Yeah, they all knew by now; everyone was waiting to witness my spectacular downfall. I was convinced Ulsh was hatching a plot to have me flunk fifth grade, preventing me from going to middle school. I’d be remade into one of those droopy-lipped farm kids who were always held back—“special helpers” the teachers called them in a lazy attempt to fan away the retard fumes. Oh, God, what if I became a special helper? What could I expect from my brothers then?
• • •
It was a plain white envelope, not a Jiffy mailer, waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I got home from school. The postmark was from Oxnard, California. I ran it upstairs and closed my door. Half-crazed, I tore it open with my teeth and watched a small piece of paper flutter to the bed—it was a credit slip for fifteen dollars. There was no explanations, no “Sorry for the inconvenience,” no “Yeah, that last eye was bad, we’ll send you a fresh one when they’re back in stock”—nothing. But here’s where I give my nervous system big props for not losing its shit: the credit slip was redeemable at—figure this out—Oracle and Pendulum. Not only did I not purchase the eye from Oracle and Pendulum, but O&P was located in Toluca Lake, not Oxnard, and Oxnard was not Hercules—the home of M.M.E.! I noticed something else inside the envelope and shook it out: a little sticker of a cow in a straw hat with the words “Knott’s Berry Farm” on the brim. This marked the beginning of my lifelong hatred for California.
I never stood a chance against the age-old forces of nature set upon earth to crush the wills of ten-year-old boys. The world was ruled by the Mr. Ulshes, and his résumé had been preapproved: adult, teacher, draft dodger; a man who drove a flashy sports car while other people were starving, who bounced cute little girls on his lap while ignoring the plain ones; a vulgar human being who pissed all over the birthday of God’s only son by callously assigning a gratuitous book report. The devil and his angels had been in Ulsh’s corner all along, enabling him to enter my head like a flotilla of squirming microbes that were slowly turning my brain into vinegar.
And I was probably on LaVey’s shit list, too, because I didn’t read his book either.
• • •
But every now and then, as the walls close in and the ground beneath you slips away, the whirling reels of the neurosis slot machine line up just so, and—click!—clarity. There existed in this world a power more frightening than black magic and more volatile than a boxcar hauling nitroglycerin. If handled correctly, this force could be used to resolve seemingly unresolvable matters. But to conjure it, one must tread carefully.
If the name Merv Resnick brings to mind the image of a little Jewish man hunched over a sewing machine in a dress factory, you’ve got the wrong kike. Picture a multi-vortex tornado sucking on a Pall Mall and you’re getting warmer. Created within a swirl of hissing steam that rolled through the streets of a Bronx slum, he emerged tall and muscular and more handsome than any movie star. Like the rest of the refuse, he grew up pissed-off and hungry, gnawing on stolen potatoes charred over newspaper fires. He trusted no one. By the time he was twelve, he’d been in more fights than Joe Louis—using his sledgehammer left to shut the mouths of “those fucking Irish�
�� who’d been genetically programmed to be the most petulant of all immigrants. (That is, if you don’t count the Germans.) By the age of fourteen, he’d been stabbed, clubbed, and shot at. But they couldn’t kill him. Patient and methodical, he took care of them all, one by one, sometimes waiting for months to serve a brick to an enemy’s head. And the shirts—all those bloody shirts the mothers brought to his tenement doorstep: “Look what your boy did to my son! That animal!” they’d screech in excited brogues. That he never initiated trouble was overlooked, and his unyielding sense of justice brought no admiration. Two eyes, a concussion, and a handful of teeth for an eye. There would be no lenience for verbal misdemeanors. Ask Keiser the druggist, who was met with a length of pipe after Merv overheard him mimic his mother’s Russian accent. Or the street sweeper who made an ill-advised remark about his grandfather’s beard. “Those fucking people ruined me,” he once said in a reflective moment. “They took a nice guy and ruined him.”
My father was like a rottweiler who protected his family unconditionally, but if you touched that weird spot on his hind leg that bugged him for some reason, you might get your face torn off. You lived in constant fear of him yet never doubted the brutal love he had for you. He wasn’t someone you went to for advice, wisdom, or relevant quotes from philosophers. You went to him when you had a problem that could not be solved by any other means, and just prayed he ruled in your favor.
One never approached Merv before he’d eaten; you didn’t walk past him, you didn’t say “hi,” you just made yourself scarce. My mother would put the food down and run. He ate alone. If he’d found some measure of peace after his meal, you knew it by the way the cigarette smoke hung in the air and how he absentmindedly fingered the snake ring coiled around his pinky. I entered the kitchen in silence, cautiously taking a seat at the table; if I accidently made the chair creak, his blood pressure would surge and I’d be harshly ejected from the room. I quietly stared out the window. It was already dark outside. The safest way to engage in a conversation with my father was to let him come to you. When Merv relaxed, and his intensity level reduced to the vicinity of neutral, something like a low gravelly hum would emanate from deep in his throat. It’s impossible to imitate and difficult to describe—as unknowable as the rebel yell of the Confederate soldiers, which exists only in the sketchy descriptions of historians. As I gazed out into the gloom, I finally heard that familiar esophageal vibration. I glanced over. He’d been watching me.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m having trouble in school,” I replied unsteadily.
“Another kid? Why don’t you rap him in the fucking mouth?”
“No,” I said. “A teacher.”
The humming stopped and he crushed out his cigarette. Our chairs creaked in unison and I let go. I admitted to doing a bad job on a book report, but the teacher wasn’t being fair. “He doesn’t like me,” I said. “He makes fun of me; he told me my ass was grass.” The kitchen light flickered as if there’d been a power surge. “I just want him to stop being mean to me.” Merv broke off a piece of sugar cookie for the dog.
“What time does he get there in the morning?”
There was no talk as my father drove me to school the next day. Sinatra was singing “Street of Dreams” on the 8-track, but all I could hear was the hum. Low, steady, present. He was relaxed to the point of almost falling asleep. My dad took care of his own problems. He didn’t need Jilly and a crew of goombahs to do it for him.
It was full-strength Merv Resnick I trailed down the hallway of James Buchanan Elementary: the cigarette, the suit, the snake ring. Fuck, just the way he moved. It was the first time he’d ever set foot in the school, but by the way he walked, you would have thought he’d built the place with his bare hands. Kids, teachers, and custodians stopped in their tracks and gaped. My God, who is that? I’d seen the reaction countless times before, whenever my father entered the space of mortals.
“Where’s the room?” he asked with as much emotion as it takes to order a cup of coffee. We approached the door. There were no kids inside; it was still early. I managed a brief glimpse of Ulsh straightening his desk. “Wait out here,” Merv said to me. Then he walked in and closed the door behind him.
All I could see were two shadows behind the frosted glass. There was no movement. I vaguely made out the muffled voice of my father. It was calm. Moments later, the door swung back open and he exited. His cigarette had barely burned down. He patted me on the head, and said, “Okay. Go to school.” I stood there and watched him walk off down the hallway, tail swaying, belly full.
I entered the classroom and found Mr. Ulsh standing by the window, gazing at the mountains. He appeared to be trying to comprehend something, something he’d be struggling to sort out for the rest of his life. Maybe his head was at last filled with the sound of ground fire and the suffering of all of those people he let die. He looked shrunken, this man who hated my guts. He slowly turned around and jumped back, as if he’d seen an apparition. Then a wide silly smile came to his face.
“Adam! My man!”
We were suddenly pals. It had all been a big misunderstanding. A lack of communication. And he felt awful about it. “Just clean up the ending a little bit!” he said merrily. “You worry too much!”
So that’s what I did: read a few relevant passages, changed a sentence or two, and at long last, Robinson Crusoe was saved. Remarkably, I received a B-minus for my efforts. That, and the enduring respect of my teacher.
The credit slip from Oxnard would remain unredeemed. We’d both been tortured enough.
Substandard Risk
They took me from my mama, an’ made a wrecked man out of me
Yeah, they took me from my mama, they made an awful mess of me
Clouds high above me cryin’, but these chains they laugh at me
—PRISON WORK SONG (UNDATED)
From the very first bell of first grade, I considered school nothing more than a hard dozen without the possibility of parole. For twelve long years, my only dream was to be a free man of legal age. And on the day of my release, I walked out of that pigeon mill with my head held high. The worst of life was behind me. I had no plans to attend college or find a job. I had no thoughts about my future. My work was done.
That same evening my father told me I’d be going into the insurance business.
The headline was delivered as I was lying on the floor, eating a bowl of Sugar Smacks and watching cartoons. Apparently no one got the memo I was retired. Soon I found myself pounding my fist on the rug and making lofty declarations about being an adult now and how my parents no longer owned me. I was rebutted with trifles about being “a goddamn bum” and possessing a GPA so low I “couldn’t get hired as a fucking circus dog.” My father had a knack for simplifying things with confusing statements.
Merv had been an insurance man for most of his adult life, and a few of my brothers had followed him into the business. We Resnick boys were a dim lot, to put it politely, but if there’s one thing we knew like the back of our hands, it was our limitations. And for guys like us, a career in sales is the little mockingbird that calls your name on your eighteenth birthday.
I bought myself some time by enrolling at HACC (Harrisburg Area Community College, for all you purists), but kept my course load fairly light. Three classes seemed like plenty, and I was acutely aware of not wanting to burn myself out. This little detour into academia quickly ended, however, when my grades arrived and my parents saw that I was flunking Basic Stagecraft as well as the Automobile in American Literature. One week later, I found myself in a pair of Florsheim Imperials, pulling up to a squat celery-colored building in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
Located in Lancaster County, Lititz is generally considered a dull town even by its comatose neighbors in Ephrata. Nonetheless, it could proudly call itself home to Dirschberger & Associates, the mid-state agency of the Keystone Valley Life Insurance Company. As I stood there, taking in this venerable landmark, I contemp
lated severing my carotid artery by shoving my head through the window of the adjoining wig shop.
Bob Dirschberger was an old friend of my father’s, even though Merv often referred to him as “a first-class putz.” I don’t know how or why Bob was chosen to be my mentor in “the business,” but I suspect my dad figured he was the only guy dumb enough to take me on. Bob greeted me in his office with a laughing grin and a slap on the shoulder. “You ready to rob a few trains, Sundance?”
He was a gregarious and somewhat dashing man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache that looked like they came with his suit. The toothy smile, which rarely faded, gave him a passing resemblance to the great character actor Warren Oates. Settling in behind his desk, he pulled out a bottle of Seagram’s Five Star and a couple of glasses. I declined because I didn’t drink, plus it was eight-thirty in the morning. Bob looked a little disheartened, but then perked up, asking hopefully, “But I bet you like pussy, right?” I assured him I did, and this made him laugh uproariously for a little too long before downing his drink. Then he got very somber and told me his ex-wife was a confused woman and when it was all said and done he felt nothing but pity for her. “You know, they start in with those diet pills and suddenly they’re seeing broads in your glove compartment . . .” He took a moment for himself, and then had me by the arm, leading me into the morning meeting. “Let me introduce you to these clowns!”