“Shut up, Mervyn,” said Jim. “Something happened here … something weird.”
“In that case you’d better pour me a stiff drink.”
Jim poured him out a large glassful of Jack Daniel’s. He took a mouthful and shuddered, as if a goose had walked over his grave. “That hit the spot! So tell me what’s been happening here.”
“I don’t know … but I feel like somebody’s trying to tell me something.” He told Melvyn all about the frozen drinking fountain and the iced-up washroom and the dancing Tarot cards.
“You’re being warned,” said Melvyn, emphatically. “There’s no question about it. You’re being warned from beyond. My Aunt Minnie kept seeing toads in her yard, and the next thing she knew she met my Uncle Irvine. And my brother Aaron had a sign. His electric kettle shorted out, and left a burn mark on his kitchen wall in the shape of a bearded man. The next day he went out and he was run over by a bearded man in a Buick Electra.”
“And?”
“And what? He died. He was only twenty-three.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“That was my brother, Jim. Do you want me to show you a picture of him?”
“No, don’t worry.”
“But he had a warning, just like you’re having a warning now. Very low temperatures, that’s always a sign of impending evil. Didn’t you ever see The Exorcist? And things that whirl around, all on their own. Very bad news. And all that ripped-up paper, looking like snow.”
Yes, thought Jim. That was exactly what it looked like. Snow. Four figures toiling through a snowstorm. Somebody was trying to tell him something about cold and ice and snow; and somebody was trying to warn him that something terrible was going to happen to him.
Mervyn flitted around, picking up little pieces of playing card. He bobbed down by the coffee-table, where there was only one card left, face-down, the card which Jim hadn’t had the time to turn over. That which crosses you – that which stands in your way.
“Don’t touch that!” said Jim, as Mervyn bent forward to pick it up, but it was already too late.
“This is a bit grim, isn’t it?” said Mervyn, waving the Death card between his manicured fingertips.
Four
The next morning started hot and hazy. The sky over Los Angeles was a weird, unearthly bronze, as if God were using a strawberry filter.
At first, Jim was worried that TT might want to come to college with him; but after breakfast she curled up on her chair on the balcony and fell asleep, so she was obviously quite content to stay where she was.
As he stepped out of the elevator he bumped into Mervyn. Mervyn was wearing a woman’s satin robe with black-and-green Japanese flowers splashed all over it. He had been out to the corner store to buy himself a huge bottle of papaya juice. “It’s so good for the equilibrium. You can go on all the scariest rides at Knott’s Berry Farm and never feel dizzy. They used to give it to kamikaze pilots.”
“Keep an eye on my cat, would you?” Jim asked him. “She seems okay, but you never know.”
“Well, exactly. Especially with the threat of you-know-what hanging over you.”
“The Death card doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to die. It could mean the death of anything. A relationship. A part of your life.”
“Scary, though! Brrr! Watch how you drive.”
By the time Jim arrived at college he was already five minutes late. Dr Friendly came out of the staff room just as he was turning the corner into the main corridor and called, “James!”
“I know. Antietam. And, please, try to call me Jim.”
“I just want you to know that we have some VIP visitors this afternoon. Two assistant secretaries from the Department of Education in Washington. George Corcoran from Postsecondary and Madeleine Ouster from Special.”
“I see. So you want me to make sure that my class appears to be slightly less subnormal than usual.”
“I’m not – I’m not denigrating them, James. It’s just that you wouldn’t train a pig to run the Kentucky Derby, would you?”
“No, and you wouldn’t eat a racehorse sandwich, either. So what’s your point?”
Dr Friendly inhaled, ready to say something, but then he decided against it.
Jim reached his classroom and dropped his books on to his desk. Everybody vaguely shuffled themselves into a tidier sort of slouch, and Washington took off his baseball cap. Jim paced around for a while, looking at them. Maybe, in the final analysis, Dr Friendly was right. Maybe he was wasting his time and the taxpayers’ money. But he had only to look at their expectant faces, one after another, to know that he couldn’t abandon them. He couldn’t leave them with no knowledge of literature at all. That would be like keeping a child locked in its room all its life, and never telling it that there were trees outside, and other people, and sky, no matter what color it was.
“Today, I feel reasonable,” he announced. “I have slept properly, showered, shaved and eaten a bowl of Chex with Greek yogurt on it. I am therefore ready to read your impressions of what I looked like yesterday.”
He passed up and down the aisles between the desks, collecting their sheets of paper. “I think you guys have a grudge against paper. It starts off white and rectangular and smooth. By the time you’ve finished with it, you’ve almost managed to turn it back into wood pulp.
He held up Joyce Capistrano’s effort, which was full of tiny holes. “Look at this. I wanted a shining contribution to expressive literature. What did I get? A lacy cake mat.
At the very back of the class, Nestor Fawkes tried to cover his paper with his elbows. Nestor was a sallow, unsmiling boy who came from a severely dysfunctional family. His face was always blotched with crimson spots and blue bruises. His older brother was in jail for attempted murder and his father regularly beat his mother until she could hardly walk. Nestor always wore cheap, ill-fitting clothes and his sneakers were falling apart. Jim doubted that there was any hope for him. Life was never that kind. But he had to try. If an understanding of Look Homeward, Angel couldn’t save him, then nothing could.
“Nestor, you want to give me your paper?”
Nestor tilted his head and looked up at Jim sideways. “It aint no good.”
“What do you mean it aint no good? Don’t you mean ‘it isn’t any good’?”
“That’s what I said, sir. It isn’t any no good.”
Jim came up close to him. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Nestor blinked in bewilderment.
“Who are you?” Jim repeated.
“Nestor Fawkes, sir.”
“That’s right. You Nestor Fawkes. You student. Me Mr Rook. Me teacher. You write. Me mark. In other words, try your best and don’t be a pessimist. You might just surprise me.”
Nestor sat with his head bowed, saying nothing. Jim took hold of the edge of his paper and slowly dragged it out from under his elbows. In extremely neat block capitals, Nestor had printed: LIKE A MAN I SAW DEAD BY THE FREEWAY HIS EYES EMPTY BY CROWS
He laid his hand on Nestor’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. If Laura Killmeyer could communicate by touch, then maybe he could, too. He wanted Nestor to know that he had written a stark and graphic description which was all the more shocking because of what it told the reader much more about the person who had written it than the person it had been written about. At the age of nineteen, who had ever seen a man lying dead by the highway, with his eyes pecked out? And, Jesus, thought Jim, did I really look as bad as that? I have to give up tequila slammers.
He returned to his desk and sat down. “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to read through your estimable efforts, and in the meantime you can open your Twentieth-Century American Poets to page one-two-eight and read ‘Auto Wreck’ by Karl Shapiro. Read it three times. Read the last verse four times, or even more, until you think you understand what he’s driving at. He says about this auto wreck,
Who is innocent?
For death in war is done by hands;
Suicide has cause and
stillbirth, logic;
And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms
But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we know of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.
Ray Krueger put up his hand. “What’s ‘day nooming’, Mr Rook?”
“It’s when French guys take their pants down,” put in Tarquin Tree. “Everybody say, ‘look at dose guys, day mooning.’”
“It’s day-noom-ing, not day-moon-ing.”
“Noom, moon, what’s the difference?”
“What do you mean, what’s the difference? You of all people, man! You’re the one who said you wanted to work for NASA. You’re going to go to the interview and tell them you want to try for a noom shot?”
Jim was used to this surrealistic banter and he didn’t discourage it. All of his students heard words differently, and read them differently, if they were able to read them at all. He deliberately gave them challenging texts to make their minds work, to make them ask questions, to give them confidence. He encouraged them to dismantle words like the engines they took to pieces when they went to the college auto shop, and put them back together again.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he told them, lifting both hands. “It’s denouement. Use your dictionaries for words that you don’t understand. Don’t mumble under your breath when you read. You’re remedial English students, not half-wits. And – Dottie – you don’t need a ruler to count down the lines. Be brave. Set yourself afloat on a sea of words. They’ll carry you along, no problem, like the Lady of Shallott. You won’t drown.”
“Yes, sir, Mr Rook, sir,” said Dottie, flushing hot pink and stowing her Disney ruler back in her bag.
“And, Ray – denouement is a French word, yes. But it means the final working out of a story or a plot. The loosening, the unraveling, when everything eventually becomes clear.”
“Hey, Mr Rook, you learn something every day.”
Washington eased himself back in his chair and said, “My dad says you learn something every day and you forget something every day. Yesterday he forgot who was the NBA Rookie of the Year, the year I was born.”
“Julius Irving, Philadelphia,” said Jim. “Now shut up and turn your wandering attention to reading this poem.”
Washington stared at him open-mouthed. “How do you know that? That’s amazing. Julius Irving. I can’t believe you said that.”
“The poem, Washington?”
When Special Class II had finally settled down into their usual state of whispering, giggling, passing messages and suppressed fidgeting, Jim leaned back in his chair with his feet on the desk and read their descriptions of yesterday’s hangover. ‘He looked like a ghost peering in through a dirty window.’ That was Dottie’s, and he gave her a six for it. ‘A bowl of wrinkly sago pudding with 2 prunes for Is.’ That was Mandy Saintskill, a black girl from Haiti. ‘Imagine a wino carrying a crumpled-up bag with a bottle of whiskey in it but the crumples make a face.’ That was Laura Killmeyer’s, very psychic. He gave it four.
Suzie Wintz had written: ‘A wrecked angel.’ He really liked that. It was accurate. It was seductive. And it was very, very flattering. It spoke of a bruised, classically handsome face. It spoke of burned feathers and high tragedy. He gave her seven and knew that he would probably regret it.
The last paper he picked up was Jack Hubbard’s. Unlike all of the others, this paper was neat and uncrumpled, as if he had scarcely touched it. The writing was extremely small, and he had to hold it closer to his nose to read it. While he did so, he could see Jack Hubbard watching him with an expression that was half-expectant and half-suspicious, optimism and cynicism mixed. ‘Your face was gone and there was nothing but a blizzard in its place. You were lost behind what you had done.’
He had tried this exercise before: asking his students to describe him. They always ended up revealing far more about themselves. You were lost behind what you had done. It didn’t sound as if he were talking about himself, but then it didn’t sound as if he were talking about Jim, either. He didn’t even know Jim, after all.
Jim lifted his pen but to mark Jack’s work but he couldn’t decide how much to give it. It was poetic, and it was expressive. It reminded him of Hart Crane, who would write lines like ‘adagios of islands complete the dark confessions her veins spell’. You knew what it meant but at the same time you didn’t.
He beckoned Jack over to his desk. Jack unwound himself from his chair and walked over in the sulky, loosely connected way that good-looking young men do. Suzie Wintz patted her hair as he went past, and splayed out her fingernails, which were sparkly yellow today.
Jim said, “What you’ve written here, it’s very interesting. But I get the feeling that it’s not about me. Or not just me. Me and somebody else.”
Jack shrugged and didn’t answer.
“I like the image of the blizzard in place of a face. That’s very imaginative. Coldness, whiteness, and a total lack of focus. But what have I done that I’m lost behind?”
“Partied too hard, I guess. Drank too much.”
“I don’t know … the implication seems deeper than that.”
“Well, I guess it can happen to anybody who says to hell with tomorrow.”
“But am I the only one you’re referring to? I can’t really explain why it is, but I get the feeling that you’re addressing this comment to somebody else as well.”
Jack thought for a moment, his eyes giving nothing away. Then he said, “Somebody told me you could see things.”
“Who told you?”
“One of the girls. She said you could see ghosts and stuff. Spirits.”
“Well, that’s right. I had a near-death experience when I was a kid. Ever since then, I’ve been able to see psychic manifestations that other people can’t. Not necessarily ghosts, but auras, too, and invisible marks. I think other people could see them, if only they knew how to. They’re a bit like those 3-D Magic Eye pictures made up of patterns. You just have to look at them exactly the right way.”
“Have you seen anything around here? Like, recently?”
Jim shook his head. “Unh-hunh. Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing. I was curious, is all.”
Jim leaned back in his chair and looked up at Jack, turning his ballpen end-over-end. “Do you have something you want to tell me?”
“No, sir. Everything’s fine.”
“I’ve been a teacher for a long time, Jack. I know when somebody’s got something on their mind.”
“I’m fine, sir. There’s really no problem.”
He went back to his desk, with Suzie Wintz’s eyes following him all the way. “Such a cu-u-ute ass,” she mouthed across the classroom to Linda Starewsky. Linda giggled and went pink.
“Okay,” said Jim, getting up from his desk. “I’ve marked yesterday’s work and I am amazed to tell you that it’s all exceptionally good. Obviously my ravaged features brought out the creative writers in all of you. I’m not too sure about your rap, Tarquin. ‘Mr Rook’s face … what a disgrace … looks like a bowlful of mayonnaise.’ Questionable simile and even more questionable rhyme.”
“Hey come on, Mr Rook. You was a paler shade of yellow. Mayonnaise, that was your exact color.”
“All right, then. I’ll mark you up to five. But next time, hold the mayo.”
They took so long to discuss each other’s descriptions of Jim with a hangover that there was no time left to get on to the Karl Shapiro poem. Jim told them to read it again overnight; and to read it out loud, too.
“When you do that, you’ll discover the background noise that Shapiro was able to create through onomatopoeic words and rhythms. You can hear the ambulance bell. You can hear the crowd. You can hear the crunching of broken glass. This poem is eye-witness stuff.
“ ‘Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating,/ And down the dark one ruby flare/ Pulsing out red light like an artery,/ The ambulance at t
op speed floating down … We are deranged, walking among the cops/ Who sweep glass and are large and composed … One with a bucket douches ponds of blood/ Into the street and gutter …’
“And then he catches the shock that everybody’s feeling. ‘We speak through sickly smiles and warn/ With the stubborn saw of common sense,/ The grim joke and the banal resolution.’
“And then he asks the questions we all ask in situations like this. ‘Who shall die? Who is innocent?’ For this – this auto wreck – ‘cancels our physics with a sneer.’”
As everybody poured out of their study groups for recess, he collided on the corner of the main corridor with Karen Goudemark. She was dressed all in black today – black jewel-neck sweater, black skirt – and her hair was severely pinned up. She had obviously finished serving ice creams in Heaven and now she was ready to greet grieving relatives at the mortuary, giving them ideas that were entirely inappropriate for a funeral.
She dropped a large maroon folder on to the floor with a loud slap and he picked it up for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I was out of line yesterday. The way I spoke to Roger and Chuck. The way I spoke to you. I was very hungover.”
“You said your cat was jealous of me. I thought that was very flattering.”
“Well, I guess you’re easily flattered. How was your evening?”
“Very pleasant, thank you. Very … what’s the word?”
“Riotous? Orgiastic? I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”
She smiled at him, and she had the widest smile and the plumpest lips and the whitest teeth he had ever seen. She was standing so close that he was breathing the perfume that had been warmed inside her cleavage. He thought that now might be a good moment to kill himself. Maybe he could stab himself up the nose with a mechanical pencil, like those Japanese students who failed their exams. After all, life could only get worse after a moment like this.
“Professional,” said Karen.
Rook: Snowman Page 5