No Dark Valley

by Jamie Langston Turner

  He stubbornly refused to admit the test was too hard. If one student—someone like a Nate Bianchi, for example—could remember that frogs had two sets of teeth, the maxillary and the vomerine, then why couldn’t all the other lazy sluggards? Maybe he was imagining things, but his students back in Alabama had seemed a little quicker than the ones at Berea Middle. He certainly wasn’t willing to consider that his teaching skills might have diminished.

  Then again he had taught mainly math classes in Alabama, so maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe he was better at teaching math than science. Although he really enjoyed science, especially life science, there was nothing like the solidity and exactness of math. He liked the fact that an equation always had a specific answer, not something you could argue about. It wasn’t iffy like the weather—this fifty percent chance of more rain tonight, for example. Math was dependable.

  A few months ago he had run across a copy of Gruber’s Complete Preparation for the SAT in a used bookstore in Greenville and had bought it just to see if he could get all the math questions right. It probably should have alarmed him that he had spent one entire Friday evening zipping through pages and pages of practice algebra problems, writing down his answers, then checking them all. He especially loved the ratio problems for some reason: If m + 4n = 2n + 8m, what is the ratio of n to m? Easy as pie, he’d say. It’s 7 : 2. If P + Q = R and P + R = 2Q, what is the ratio of P to R? In a flash he had the answer—1 : 3. Nothing but child’s play.

  Ratios were such an interesting way to look at life, to consider its problems as simple relationships. Maybe he should take his Gruber’s SAT book along with him to the motel tonight. He could watch a movie, work a few math problems, eat a snack, watch another movie, and so forth. He shook his head. That wasn’t one bit funny.

  Since Kimberly and Matt’s driveway was sloped, Bruce decided to play it safe and park on the street for now. He half skated down to the back of the house. The patio in front of his apartment door was glazed over in a solid sheet. No sign of Celia’s Mustang next door, though the Stewarts’ Buick was there. Evidently Patsy and Milton were holed up inside their house. They had a woodstove in their kitchen and kept a stack of oak logs beside the front door. He wondered what scintillating conversation would go on between them tonight in the dark.

  He wondered how Celia would spend an evening without power when she got home. No doubt she was well stocked with candles and flashlights. She would probably do something sensible like eat a peanut butter sandwich, then straighten a few closet shelves and go to bed early. It would get awfully cold in her apartment, though. The Stewarts would probably invite her upstairs to sit by the fire.

  Inside, he quickly got his things together, then stopped at his bookcase on the way back out. So which movies should he take along with him? He wasn’t in the mood for anything really intense, nothing like The Fugitive or Day of the Condor or Clear and Present Danger, three of his favorites. He didn’t want to watch anything tonight that would increase his heart rate. And nothing really long or fantastical—no Star Wars or Lord of the Rings tonight.

  Driving Miss Daisy—now there was a possibility. He pulled it off the shelf and put it in his duffel bag, then added The Trip to Bountiful. Though he had watched it only a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t mind seeing it again, a Hollywood movie with all those hymns in it. Okay, two movies about old women—well, he wasn’t going to try to analyze that. They were both good stories, and he liked old women fine. Singing in the Rain—it was the only musical he owned. He pulled it out and put it in his bag with the other two. Okay, so now he had old women and dancing men. He quickly added Citizen Kane. There, that was a movie for the true cinema lover, somebody with an interest in the history of technique, camera angles, special effects, and all that.

  Heading back up the driveway to the street, he was glad he wasn’t staying in a cold, dark house by himself tonight. He stood for a moment beside his truck, looking up at the treetops, feeling the sting of rain on his face. All was quiet in the neighborhood except for the creaking of a tree limb somewhere nearby. Bruce wondered where it would land when it fell.

  As he got into his truck, he saw a cat sitting in the window of the neighbor’s house across the street, peacefully watching the world turn to ice outside. Thankfully, Kimberly had given her cat away a few days after Matt had gotten home from Germany, so he didn’t have to worry about checking on it while they were in Florida. Matt claimed to have developed an allergy to cat dander while in Europe, but Bruce had his doubts. He suspected that Matt didn’t like the way Kimberly baby-talked and cooed to the cat, who never returned one iota of her affection. He further suspected that Matt wasn’t crazy about the fact that the cat had been sleeping on his side of the bed during his absence.

  Even in a species known for its hauteur, Kimberly’s cat was in a class of its own, nothing like the sweet cat he had had as a boy, the one that had died in the fire. Tabitha would lie contentedly in his lap for hours at a time and let him knead behind her ears. Out of all the legs in the house, his had always been the ones she had chosen to rub herself against. Kimberly’s cat, on the other hand, acted like humans were a step below squirrels and field mice.

  * * *

  Out on Highway 11 cars were creeping along. Even in good weather people had grown wary of this road, and they surely weren’t going to take chances on a day like this. More people had been killed on this stretch than any other place in the county. Be patient, Bruce told himself, keep your place in line, stay on the road, and within fifteen minutes you’ll be on I-85.

  Maybe he would eat supper at the Cracker Barrel off the interstate outside Greenville. He liked their food. Then he’d have the whole evening before him. Maybe he’d do a little shopping tonight if the malls were open, then check into the motel and start his movie marathon. Or maybe he’d forget the malls and go straight to the movies.

  He suddenly realized how tired he was from four months spent with middle schoolers. Right now he didn’t even want to think about facing another five months after Christmas was over. How would he ever find the energy to tackle the chapter on human reproduction? “Cover the material in a straightforward manner,” the teacher’s manual said. “If you treat it maturely, your students will respond in kind.” He would like to have a talk with those textbook writers someday and find out what planet they were from.

  Forget school for now, he told himself. Think about a whole evening in a comfortable motel room with a supply of snacks and some of your favorite movies to watch. A question presented itself to him: What was the ratio between the number of different movies he had seen during his life and the number in his current collection? Well, what did it really matter, since so many of the ones he had seen were so bad? Here was a better one—what was the ratio between the number he now owned and the number he would have a year from now? Given the fact that his conscience had started protesting so much lately, he wouldn’t be surprised if the first number in that ratio turned out to be larger than the second.

  Things he had seen dozens of times before without even batting an eye were beginning to bother him. Only last weekend, for example, he had found himself stopping and ejecting a video when the scene suddenly shifted from a man and dog trekking up a snowy mountainside to that same man in bed with a woman. And it wasn’t so much that the bedroom scene, to which he had never objected before, now seemed largely irrelevant to the main plot. The real offense, and the one that he actually shouted at the television screen, was the fact that the couple barely knew each other. “You just met her yesterday!” were his exact words, directed at the man—an actor Bruce had always admired for having won three Oscars.

  And the worst thing, the part that let him know he shouldn’t hang on to such a video, was the way it burst open the floodgates of his past. No sooner had the words left his mouth than he replied to himself, “Well, aren’t we pious?” And as the faces of many girls suddenly rose up before him like clouds of little bubbles someone was blowing through a plastic w
and, he added, “What about all these, Mr. Sanctimonious? How long did you wait after you met them?”

  He was glad his pickup had four-wheel drive, but even so he wasn’t going to push it. In his younger days, he had hotdogged all over the place, whether the roads were slippery or dry, but that was only another of the many ways he had changed.

  What would the ratio be between the number of dollars of damage he had done to cars due to his careless driving, he wondered, and the list price of the Ford pickup he now drove? That might be interesting to know—or discouraging. He wondered how parents of boys could ever let them get behind the wheel of a car. He couldn’t imagine the responsibility of rearing a son. He was too aware of male weaknesses—he would make the poor boy’s life miserable. Of course, it didn’t look as if he would ever have to face such a responsibility. Somebody like Strom Thurmond might have married at sixty-six and sired four children after that, but it made Bruce tired to think of having teenagers when you were in your eighties. He could barely keep up with the ones at school. Some days he couldn’t wait to send them all home—and he was only forty.

  The rain was getting considerably lighter now. Even a fine mist was treacherous, though, when the temperature was below freezing. He passed a car that had slid off the road. No one was in it or he might have stopped. That could have been nice, to have someone in the car with him—some distraught person who needed his help.

  All of a sudden it hit him that an evening watching movies alone left a lot to be desired. And what if the storm migrated this way and knocked out all the power in his motel room, say right in the middle of Gene Kelly’s great dance scene in the pouring rain? Then he would be in a cold, dark, strange place all alone. So what if the news said the storm wasn’t likely to reach Greenville? Likely was a mighty precarious word.

  Maybe he should drive farther south—on toward Anderson or Commerce, Georgia. That should be even safer. He had heard all the teachers at school talk about the good shopping in Commerce, all the women teachers that is. None of the men cared much about outlet stores. Or maybe he should forget Commerce and drive all the way to Atlanta. He could no doubt find a really spectacular gift for Maddy in Atlanta, maybe even that ambulance he was still hoping for.

  But wherever he went tonight, he needed to be back home by Sunday to help with the children’s Christmas program at church that night. Of course, if the power wasn’t back on by then, they might not be having a Christmas program—and then what would they do? All the props for the manger scene and the shepherds’ bathrobes and staffs had been collected and were stored in the choir room. If they put it off a week, it would be after Christmas.

  Goodness, he was letting himself get entirely too keyed up over this little ice storm. He was acting like an old person. Where was his flexibility, the attitude of let-come-what-may that he was feeling so proud of only moments earlier? Calm down, get a grip, everything’s going to be okay, he told himself. If Greenville gets hit, then you can get in your trusty truck and move on down the road. If the Christmas program gets canceled, life will still go on. School’s out. You’re a free man for two whole weeks.

  He was nearing the little strip mall now where the Trio Gallery was, only a couple of miles away from the 85 exit. Though the sky was still the color of slate, it appeared that the rain had now stopped altogether. Maybe the weatherman would actually be right about something for a change.

  It was almost three-thirty, but Bruce was already feeling really hungry. Lunch had been totally confusing with all the announcements over the intercom, kids leaving, the cafeteria helpers trying to hurry things up. Bruce had eaten a single piece of pizza while helping patrol the front hall and office area. Other teachers had been scurrying to take down their Christmas decorations and pack up to go home early.

  A good hot meal would definitely be first on the agenda. He would be at the Cracker Barrel before four o’clock, so he could get right in. Slowing down slightly as he passed the strip mall, he glanced toward the Trio Gallery. There were lights on in most of the shops but only a couple of cars in the parking lot. He wondered if any of the shop owners would close down early today. Surely Celia would have been listening to the weather on a day like today. Surely she knew about the broken electrical lines in Berea and Derby and wouldn’t want to wait until almost dark to drive home and see if her apartment had power. He thought again of how cold her apartment would get without electricity and hoped the Stewarts would look out for her. Maybe she would stay the night at the gallery. Maybe there was a cot in a back room somewhere.

  Suddenly he had an idea, a very silly one, but one that he could almost imagine himself acting on. He was already past the gallery by now, fortunately, but the idea kept growing in his mind. It was totally ridiculous. He would never do it. He wouldn’t dare. He wasn’t in the mood for another snub. But it could be different this time. He wouldn’t get all flustered and talk too much.

  He saw himself open the front door of the gallery and saunter in. He saw Celia lift her head from . . . whatever it was she did all day. Besides bookkeeping, that is. Milton had said not long ago that Celia had “taken over the books” at the gallery, which meant she was working longer hours during the week than she used to and wasn’t working on Saturdays anymore.

  Driving on, Bruce pictured himself in the gallery, standing by the door, looking around with a detached air, trying to decide if this was really worth his time. Very cool, very nonchalant. No nervous stumbling around for words this time. He did not even so much as glance in Celia’s direction, though he could tell that she was looking at him, her fingers poised over the computer keyboard.

  Humming a tune, something she would recognize—maybe “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”—he would proceed around the gallery perusing the works of art, maybe making notes on a pad of paper, as if he was seriously considering a purchase or was going to write up a critique on the show for the newspaper. She would resume her work at the computer, but hesitantly, the irregular clicks of the keyboard giving it away that she was eaten up with curiosity about why he was here at the gallery.

  He skipped over ten or fifteen minutes, still walking around humming, before returning to the door, stopping to make one last notation on his pad. She had risen from the desk by now and was kneeling by a large painting on the floor, measuring its length and width. He could tell that she was only pretending to be busy, though, that if he asked her the dimensions of the painting, she would have to measure it all over again. He opened the door, which triggered an electronic bell sound, and watched her head spin around to see if he was leaving. He saw the stricken look on her face as she saw him step across the threshold.

  At which point he pretended to take notice of her for the first time and step back in, at which point her face flooded with barely disguised joy, at which point he spoke to her: “It’s pretty nasty outside today.” She stood and came to the window, a worried look in her sad eyes.

  “How will I ever get home?” she said, wringing her hands. “The tires on my car have almost no tread left on them.”

  “There’s no power at your house,” Bruce said gently. “I just came from there. The whole neighborhood is out.”

  Her hand went to her throat. “It will be so cold,” she said. “And I hate the dark.”

  A car honked, and Bruce edged back into his lane. Good thing he had snapped back to reality—he barely had time to veer onto the 85 exit. Way to go, Walter Mitty, he told himself. He remembered the movie, with Danny Kaye playing the role of the addlebrained daydreamer. But at least he wasn’t going to extremes like Walter Mitty—no World War II ace pilot heroics, no life-or-death surgical procedures or courtroom dramas. But then maybe he was going to extremes. In fact, he most definitely was. What was more extreme than dreaming about somebody like Celia melting at the sight of him, hinting for him to take care of her?

  You ought to be ashamed, he told himself. And before the other side of him, the defensive whiny side, could say, “What for?” he provided the answer: “The only
reason you keep thinking about her is that she doesn’t give you the time of day.” And he recognized it as the absolute truth. If she fell for him the way other women always had, he could mark her off and forget about her.

  How many times had he watched women submit to him after he had plotted just the right word spoken at just the right time with just the right amount of innuendo and a suggestive smile, a long knowing look, a flippant nod—whatever it took for that particular woman, which was always something he seemed to know instinctively.

  And though he had never ever forced himself on a girl, would have considered that the height of bad manners not to mention an empty victory, he knew in his heart that he had done exactly that by his smooth talking and subtle gestures. What did it matter, really, whether you used charm or brawn to get your way? Soft manipulation or manhandling—both resulted in the same thing. He had known exactly what he was doing. How could he ever forgive himself? How could God stand the sight of somebody like him in heaven with all the white-robed saints who deserved to be there?

  And then, right there on I-85 heading toward Greenville, he again heard a chiding voice: But grace, don’t ever forget grace! Part of him wanted to say, But my sins are so many, while the other part scolded, You have got to be the slowest learner in all of Christendom. God’s grace, he told himself firmly, is big enough to cover the blackest sins. It’s strong enough to lift the heaviest load of guilt, to blow the dirt of shame from the darkest corner and scatter it to the four winds. It’s good and bright enough to shine into a man’s heart and clean out all the filth of the past forever and ever.