Night Train
Page 9
Meldrick gave Window a lecture about blowing all of his money on junk food, porno flicks, and pornographic magazines. “Are you oversexed or what?” Meldrick said. “I know you’re nineteen but you are really driving this into the ground. The librarians found one of your porno magazines in their workroom and it totally grossed them out. Ray told them a student left it and covered your ass, but use your head, dammit. Think.”
One evening Window sought out Meldrick and, much alarmed, told him that Catherine had paged him at work and said she was going to have another baby in two weeks. Window asked Meldrick how it could be possible since he hadn’t slept with her in over a year. “She says I did once when we got drunk and that I don’t remember, but she lies.”
Meldrick said, “Page is right, Roy is dicking her. Geez! Your own brother! This is ridiculous!”
Meldrick immediately demanded to know how Catherine could be eight and a half months pregnant without Window’s knowing it. Window hung his head down and said, “She’s so fat, I couldn’t tell.”
Later, Window showed Meldrick phone bills to Catherine’s first love, the old boyfriend in Spokane. Meldrick asked Window if he might be the culprit, but Window was sure it was Roy. He remembered a night back in the fall when he was in the next-door apartment mediating a fight between the couple that lived there. “You see, Johnny hit Karen on the back of the head with a frying pan and they were crashing furniture. I told them fighting wasn’t the answer and that they should talk things out. Karen said, ‘What I hear you saying, Johnny, is that Another World is dumb, that Carl Hutchins is a skinny-ass, short crotch with a greasy ponytail and that I’ve got a TV crush on him, but I—’ ”
Meldrick said, “Window, I don’t want to hear a fucking soap opera plot!”
“Okay, okay, but listen to this—when they calmed down I went back home and the shade was down and I saw their shadows. Catherine and Roy were on the couch, kissing. He had her bra off. I could see her big hard tits through the shade.”
“He saw silhouettes,” Meldrick told Ted Frank Page that night at volleyball. “Silhouettes on the shade—” Everyone fell silent at this declaration, and Meldrick’s words continued to resonate through the unusual acoustics of the gym.
Finally Ted Frank Page said, “Window, why didn’t you go in and kick ass?”
Window began to strut around the basketball court with his fists on his hips and his bubble butt high. “There’s this loose rock in the yard. I’m always tripping on it in the night. I’m so mad at Roy and Catherine, I tried to dig up the rock with my fingers until I’m breaking my fingernails and chipped my tooth.”
“He was biting the rock,” Meldrick said. “It’s solid granite. I’ve seen that rock.”
“It kept wobbling in the ground like it would come out easy but I can’t get it out until I get the jack handle out of my trunk and dig it up—”
“How big?” Page said. “What did you do?”
“Plenty big,” Window said. “A bowling ball, only heavier. I ran up to the window and threw the fucker in—Boom!” Window took his janitor keys from his belt and heaved them against the glass blackboard at the far end of the gym. Then he kicked a number of volleyballs so hard they cracked ceiling tiles. The janitors waited for Window to finish with his tantrum.
“Well, what did they do, Window? What did Catherine and Roy do? What the fuck happened?” Page asked.
“He ran and hid in the bushes,” Meldrick said.
“You didn’t go inside and kick ass?” Page asked. “Jesus, Window.”
“I was afraid I would get arrested. Catherine called the cops. I stayed in the bushes until the police officers left. Then I went back to Johnny and Karen’s and had beer—”
“Eventually you went home. What did you say?” Page said.
“I didn’t say anything. Catherine said some crazy person chunked a boulder in the window. A dope fiend or some nut who escaped from Eastern State Hospital.”
“And you didn’t kick ass?” Page asked.
“I puked up the beer in the toilet,” Window said.
“He was upset,” Meldrick said. “And he can’t argue with this manipulative and domineering woman. She’s trying to sell him a story that he knocked her up when he was drunk one night. And half the time she’s going around with Roy’s hickeys on her neck. Mercy me! I fear this is not the idyllic dream of connubial bliss Window had envisioned.”
Ted Frank Page stood in the center of the gym bouncing a volleyball. “Ha, ha, ha, fucking Meldrick! ‘Connubial bliss.’ Where did you come up with that shit? ‘Connubial bliss.’ Ah, ha, ha—fuck!”
Meldrick turned serious. “Think, Window. You know for certain that you did not sleep with your wife for at least nine months?”
Window looked up, his eyes wide. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Then get a blood test when the kid is born. Divorce the bitch—”
Window could not sleep or eat and rushed through his area every night so that he could go upstairs and help Meldrick, so that Meldrick, in his gratitude, would offer him psychological consolation. Meldrick was the only custodian who didn’t dismiss him with an “I told you so.”
“I know it’s Roy’s baby, it looks just like him,” Window said. “It’s got his Bugs Bunny nose—”
“Window, think. When was the last time you slept with Catherine? Are you sure there is no possibility?”
“It can’t be mine, Meldrick. I just know it. Can we ask the I Ching?”
Meldrick took Window into the library and got the I Ching from the shelves. The two custodians went into the librarian’s office and while Window tossed the coins, Meldrick wrote down the resulting hexagram—Number 29.
“What does it mean?” Window said.
“Bad. It means bad,” Meldrick said.
“Meldrick,” Window said with some hope, “can you ask it if I’m going to win the lottery?”
“Window. Geez! Are you still pissing your money away on lottery tickets? What’s the fucking use? You won’t listen. This is futile, pure and simple futile.”
Catherine initiated divorce proceedings against Window and got everything except for the useless Citroën. The court ordered Window to pay six hundred dollars a month in child support and after his lawyer’s monthly payment, the credit-card charges and room and board at his parents’ home, Window was left with a pathetic seventy dollars for pin money. He walked six miles to work and six miles home again. Ted Frank Page liked to take out a pencil and paper at the janitor’s table and calculate how much Roy’s baby would ultimately cost Window…a figure well over sixty thousand dollars. “You could have gone to that ranch in Las Vegas and got some good pussy for that kind of money, Window.”
Josie sat down with Window one afternoon and tried to calculate a way to pay off his outstanding bills and save enough money to initiate a blood test to determine the father of Catherine’s second baby.
“My dad said the test won’t work on two brothers.”
“They’ve got a new test. It will work, believe me,” Josie said.
Whenever Window mentioned the possibility of going to a lawyer to get a court order for DNA testing, Catherine clenched her fists, scrunched down, and flew into a rage.
“You see,” Meldrick said, “if she wasn’t worried, she’d just laugh in your face and call you a fool. She’s guilty as hell, and she’s scared.”
Yet no matter how Josie figured it, there was no way Window could come up with the two thousand dollars for legal and medical fees necessary for the blood test. “Can’t your parents loan you the money?” Josie asked.
“They said I’m on my own,” Window said. “I think they are—you know—embarrassed—”
“Because of what your brother did. It really is low. They ought to be embarrassed.”
“That’s fucking special ed for you,” Ted Frank Page said.
“We told you not to marry the bitch,” Meldrick said, puffing on a cigarillo in the janitor’s room.
“Window,” Josie said, “the next time you want a date, go to church and meet a girl there. A girl with virtue.”
Window took to blowing his seventy dollars cash the first day he got it each month. Invariably he spent the money on pornography and junk food. While his mother provided Window with board, she did not supply junk food, so Window used his key to the student store and began to raid the candy supplies until the diversified occupations teacher had the lock changed. Then Window began taking the cook’s key to the freezer and started stealing student pizzas. One day, when he went for the key in the top drawer of the cook’s desk, he found that it was gone. “They’re on to you,” Packard said. “Don’t admit anything. If you get called in, deny it.”
“If I get called in?” Window said with real fear in his voice.
“Yeah, if you get called in and they grill you—lie, motherfucker.”
“Called in?” Window said. “Into the office?”
“I don’t know why in the fuck you are worried,” Ted Frank Page said. “You are the motherfucker who’s busting ass and—hey! who is collecting? I’ll tell you, it’s that fat-ass ex-wife and your brother, taking your money, welfare, and all the rest of it. If I was you, I’d hop in that Citroën and fly off to Fringus, go back among your own kind. If they fired you they would be doing you a favor.”
“He’s right, Window,” Meldrick said. “You are a noble spirit, an innocent—a pure soul and much too good for this pitiless brutal planet. You deserve a better fate than this.”
The vice-principal began to write Window up for tiny infractions. Once Window left his vacuum cleaner in the band room and the band instructor complained to the office. “The next time it happens,” the vice-principal said jauntily, displaying his palm with a flourish, “probation.”
On another occasion Window forgot there was a senior parents’ meeting and took a shortcut to the Coke machine, bursting into the conference room in a T-shirt with his Walkman blasting Fine Young Cannibals. The vice-principal wrote him up for not wearing his custodian’s shirt and for listening to a headset, a safety hazard. Window finally made probation when another custodian claimed Window used his mop and bucket and left it dirty in the janitor’s closet. It was not a major crime, but there had been an accumulation of misdemeanors.
Window put his nose to the grindstone for six months, but two weeks after the probation was officially lifted, he left the vacuum cleaner in the band room again. “If you do this once more,” the vice-principal said, “you will be fired.”
Window received an unexpected windfall on his income tax return—eleven hundred dollars. Josie immediately made an appointment with Window’s attorney only to learn that the cost of the blood test had gone up substantially. Window was so upset he frittered away the money and then he left his vacuum cleaner in the band room for the third time. When the vice-principal read the union contract and learned that he could not fire Window for this offense, he instructed the head custodian to give Window more area to clean and to ride him, but the head custodian only paid lip service to the order. For one thing, Window never gave him any guff and for another, Ted Frank Page, who was bench-pressing over three hundred and fifty pounds, physically threatened the head custodian. It was not entirely for Window’s sake. Ted Frank Page learned that the head custodian had been bad-mouthing Page for laziness and like everything that was said at the janitors’ table, it worked its way around the grapevine in less than a day.
When a clutch cable for Window’s Citroën arrived from the auto supply house in Marseilles, a note went up on the custodians’ bulletin board stating that no custodian was to receive personal mail at the school.
Meldrick and Ted Frank Page installed the clutch cable and the auto instructor boiled out the radiator on the Citroën, but scarcely two weeks after it was running, the clutch cable snapped. It had been installed backwards and the Citroën sat in its accustomed home in the back parking lot for three more months until another cable was dispatched from Marseilles, France.
Window learned to consult the I Ching on his own and spent hours in the library asking it questions. Ray, the custodian who worked the special education area, asked Meldrick what Window was doing. Mystified, Ray hid by the library door and watched. “He shakes pennies in his hand and then tosses them down on the desk and writes something down and then he looks something up in a book. What is he doing?”
“It’s beyond comprehension,” Meldrick said. “Don’t even attempt an understanding.”
Meldrick and Packard installed the second clutch cable on the Citroën in the correct fashion and a week after it was running, Window came into the school clutching a check for five thousand dollars. A car collector spotted the Citroën and had given Window a check on the spot. The head custodian called the buyer a fool while Ted Frank Page insisted that Window could have gotten three times that amount. Before Window could cash the check, Josie called his lawyer and then personally drove him to the bank and then to the law office where the blood test was paid for—in full, in advance.
Catherine came by the school and had a tantrum. She had court papers in her hand directing her to submit to blood tests. She screamed at Window and told him that the welfare lawyer told her Window wasn’t going to get to first base since the blood tests were a “cruel invasion” and that she had recently become a Jehovah’s Witness and would not, under any circumstances, spill a drop of her own blood.
“Is that how you act,” Ted Frank Page said, “when you get religion, cursing and having tantrums?” Catherine stalked out of the building with her friend Lutetia trailing after her.
“Yeah,” Window said, puffing up, “you should wash your mouth out with soap.”
The blood tests proved conclusively that Window’s brother, Roy, was the father of Catherine’s second child and Window’s lawyer got the double child-support payment lifted from Window’s check. Because of the rise in income, welfare immediately seized a larger payment for Window’s uncontested son.
The custodian who had Window written up for using his mop bucket sneered, “All that fucking rigmarole to save a hundred bucks a month. That’s what you get for listening to that asshole, Meldrick,” he said.
For his part, Meldrick consoled Window by telling him that life wasn’t fair.
Josie placed a call to Window’s attorney and asked if the brother would have to pay the child support retroactively. The attorney said Roy would have to make the retroactive payments but that Window would not receive any of the money. “So you mean welfare is collecting twice?”
“Yes, we could appeal, but I would advise against it. It’s going to cost a lot of dough.”
Window used the balance of his Citroën money to pay off his debts and buy new clothes. Ted Frank Page, always appalled by Window’s taste, found the new clothes especially bad. “Fucking special ed. Don’t fucking buy clothes, Window, unless you take me along. Where did you get that shit?”
“At D&R’s. What’s the matter with these clothes? My ma says they look snazzy.”
“Your mother came from the old country, Window. You look like you just hopped off the boat yourself. The Neon Boat.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Window said sharply.
“Well, fuck you,” Ted Frank Page said.
“Hey,” Meldrick said, “it’s his money, his clothes.”
“So how much did you save after all of this shit? Anything?” Page asked.
“In the long run, he saves fourteen thousand,” Josie said. “Next time you want a date, Window, go to church. Meet a nice girl. A girl with virtues.”
“I can’t go to the damn church without falling asleep,” Window said, “and all the church girls are ugly. Plus, Ted Frank Page, I didn’t do it for the money! I just wanted to know if the baby was mine. If it was mine, I pay gladly. Now in my heart I’m satisfied.” Window looked at Page squar
ely and Ted Frank Page returned the look.
“Well good for you, Window. I am sorry I said that. Please accept my humble apology.”
“And no more special ed jokes!” Window said.
“I’m going to shut my mouth,” Page said.
The head custodian said, “Window has become a man. He’s making inroads. Now let’s go scrub that lower hall.” It was Christmas break and the custodians were all working the day shift. The school was quiet and they had taken an hour-long break, which was now becoming oppressively long.
Window said, “I’m tired of being the mop jockey.”
“Window runs the scrubber,” Page said. “I’ll sling the mops.”
The custodial crew set out the yellow caution signs in the lower hallway and without a word, each picked out a task. One laid down the stripper solution. Another took the doodlebug and began edging the sides of the hall. Yet another set up the wet vac while Window plugged in the scrubber, looked to his left and right to see that everyone was in position and then squeezed the power trigger. The black stripping pad was dry, causing the scrubber to lurch violently for a few seconds. Window had to muscle the big machine until it picked up enough water and then began to sing as it glided effortlessly over the scuffed tile. When Ray turned on a country/western station on the radio, Window said, “Turn off that hillbilly shit and play some rock and roll.” As the designated operator of the scrubber, Window had that right since at East High, the designated operator of the scrubber was janitor king of the day.
Mosquitoes
I GUESS THE REASON I can’t relate to Clendon:…he almost cracked up getting his Ph.D., got weird, and took off to Vermont, bought a Volvo, and married this cool slim blonde with long legs, nine thousand dollars’ worth of capped teeth and a heart colder than the dark side of the moon. Victoria. Spoiled single child, rich and indulged. Sarah Lawrence degree in art history. Clothes are DKNY. She drives a BMW and Clendon worships her and all the time I was there I saw her make him squirm and humiliate him. I’m thinking he’s getting some kind of masochistic thrill out of this. There was something in that that has estranged us as brothers and has made us like Cain and Abel. I mean, I can’t identify with somebody who won’t fight back. I can’t work up any sympathy for him.