Fifty Contemporary Writers

by Bradford Morrow

  “Mason, this isn’t going anywhere,” Carol Eberling asserted.

  “Right you are,” I said. “The show is over. Time to close the concession stand and sweep up the peanut shells. I would rather teach front-end alignment at an auto mechanics school in Framingham than continue to cast my lot with higher education. And so, with all humility and a deep appreciation for the effort you’ve expended in reading my dissertation, I withdraw my candidacy.”

  “Mason, no,” Dr. Eberling said through gritted teeth.

  “That is a terrible idea,” said Dr. Girard.

  “Most Nietzschean,” said Dr. Schwendeman.

  “Withdrawal accepted,” said Dr. Pielmeister.

  “Go back to your offices, good professors,” I concluded. “Pick up your paychecks. See who’s reviewed your latest books in The Journal of Astonishingly Articulate Academic Discourse. But from this moment on, Sinuhe is his own man.”

  I rose and, stepping toward the footlights, dipped my head in a theatrical bow. The audience members variously clapped, booed, hissed, and cheered. As I rushed down the aisle and into the foyer, a young man drew abreast of me and asked if I wanted to star in his student film about Sigmund Freud’s first sexual encounter. I gave him my e-mail address, then hurried into the street.

  Every college campus has its beer hall, its rathskeller, its underground den of inconsequential iniquity—someplace where the philosophy majors can huddle in the corners hashing over eros and mortality while the athletes sit at the bar discussing fucking and sudden-death overtime. At Hawthorne this favored hangout was the Shepherd’s Pie, a convivial Commonwealth Avenue grotto where, according to rumor, H. P. Lovecraft had once sat composing what is probably his worst piece of fiction, Re-animator: Tales of Herbert West, but the theory is dubious at best, as that hidebound recluse rarely left Providence.

  I skipped dinner and headed straight for the Pie, where I ordered a pitcher of Guinness, then sidled toward my favorite alcove, the very niche in which I’d once gotten my fellow PhD candidate Matthew Forstchen, a card-carrying pragmatist, to admit the logical flaw in William James’s assertion that refusing to believe something is itself a kind of faith. (Do I have faith that the moon is not made of green cheese? Must I experience a divine revelation before rejecting Ouija boards?) Although my intention was to celebrate my escape from academe, I could not summon the requisite jollity. My position at Watertown High was about to evaporate, and since I wasn’t remotely qualified to teach front-end alignment in Framingham or anywhere else, I would soon be staring privation in the face. Returning to my parents in Philadelphia wasn’t an option, as the law of self-preservation required me to distance myself from the slow-motion train wreck that was their marriage, nor could I imagine moving in with my sister Gwen, who was barely surviving through a combination of waitressing and off-Broadway acting gigs and didn’t need a grumpy unemployed little brother in her life.

  I was also enduring the emotional aftermath of my meltdown in Schneider. Holding forth on the stage, I’d imagined I was participating in a venerable heroic tradition—the individual versus the system—but now I simply felt like a screwup. I vowed to send apologetic e-mails to Eberling, Schwendeman, Girard, and perhaps even Pielmeister. Tracy Blasko also deserved a letter, a real one, the kind that reposes on paper and arrives in an envelope. I would thank her for tolerating my eccentricities during the past five years, then attempt to explain why I’d jumped ship.

  “Mind if I join you?” a sonorous voice inquired.

  I looked up. My visitor was an owlish black man in his late forties, with a salt-and-pepper beard and eyes as dark and soft as plums.

  “I’m not in a very good mood,” I told him. “Have a seat.”

  We shook hands.

  “Dawson Wilcox, Paleontology Department,” he said. “Your notoriety precedes you. Mason Ambrose, late of the Philosophy Department, author of a quirky dissertation called Ethics from the Earth.” On the nearest empty chair he deposited a leather satchel, brown and scuffed and also bulging, as if perhaps it contained a fossil mandible. “May I buy you a beer?”

  I gestured toward my pitcher of stout. “I’m fixed for the evening. Here’s a question for you, Dr. Wilcox. Does this pitcher truly hold four beers, or merely four potential beers, each awaiting the reification that will occur upon being poured?”

  Wilcox gave me a blank look. “No wonder philosophers can’t get funded.”

  I filled my glass with stout. An ivory wave of foam frothed over the rim and cascaded onto the table. “Will you help me get to the bottom of this? The pitcher, I mean, not the ontological mystery.”

  Wilcox fetched a second glass from the bar, along with a bowl of miniature pretzels. I poured him a beer, grabbed a pretzel, and took a gulp of Guinness,

  “I followed you here from Schneider,” my drinking companion said. “Let me congratulate you on what was perhaps the liveliest dissertation defense in Hawthorne history.”

  “Seppuka makes a great spectator sport,” I said, munching.

  “I’m here to offer you a job.”

  “I never even played with plastic dinosaurs.”

  “Oh, no, not in my department, though I appreciate the kind words you put in for Mr. Darwin this afternoon.”

  “Let me guess. You decided to become a paleontologist when you fell madly in love with Tyrannosaurus rex in fourth grade.”

  Wilcox issued a cryptic laugh and downed some Guinness, embroidering his upper lip with a second mustache. “Ever hear of Isla de Sangre?”

  “Blood Island?”

  “Ringed by a rare species of red coral,” he replied, nodding. “The coccyx of the Florida Keys, so far south it nudges the Tropic of Cancer. The owner’s a former colleague of mine, Edwina Sabacthani, a molecular geneticist. Eccentric, capricious, smart as God—the sort of person who’ll show up on the last day of an academic conference, sniff out whoever’s been a particularly pompous boor all week, and start hinting that she’s noticed a major methodological flaw in his latest published results.”

  I drained my glass. The Guinness started doing what it was designed to do. “Three cheers for academic conferences,” I said. The one time I’d delivered a paper at a conference, “The Geist in the Machine,” a précis of my master’s thesis on Schelling, I didn’t meet any minds of Edwina Sabacthani caliber, but I was memorably seduced by a tenured utilitarian from Toronto named Frédérique Wintrebert, who said she’d become aroused by my use of the word praxis.

  “Here’s the deal,” Wilcox said. “Edwina has asked me to find a tutor for her adolescent daughter. I think you’re our man.”

  “I’m a neo-Darwinian atheist, Dr. Wilcox. The average American mother would rather fill the position with Humbert Humbert.”

  “It’s not your Darwinism that caught my attention,” Wilcox said. “What impressed me was your rambling but nonetheless astute overview of Western ethics. I’ve never met the young woman in question, but evidently she has a handicap. In Edwina’s words, Londa Sabacthani ‘lacks a moral center.’ You’re supposed to give her one.”

  I poured myself a second glass. “Maybe I should print up a business card. Mason Ambrose. Failed Philosopher. Superegos Installed While You Wait.”

  “This is a sad and serious case,” Wilcox said in a mildly reproving tone.

  I gulped some stout and picked up a pretzel, orienting it so the parabolas suggested laudable breasts viewed from above. “There’s a whole science to pretzels,” I said as still more Guinness washed through my brain’s aching capillaries. “Mathematicians can plot the twists and curves. Wittgenstein would not be impressed. Actually I don’t think anything impressed Wittgenstein, with the possible exception of Wittgenstein.”

  “The position pays one hundred thousand dollars for the first year. After that, you and Edwina can negotiate.”

  I sucked on the pretzel, enjoying the sensation of the salt crystals copulating with my taste buds. One hundred thousand dollars? Pielmeister probably made more than a hundred
thousand a year, but certainly not per student.

  “You have to realize, this is an extremely difficult decision for me. I’m broke. I’m about to lose my job. I just threw away my future. And yet, sir—and yet you have the audacity to imagine I would accept a small fortune for taking an undemanding sinecure in a tropical paradise.”

  Wilcox patted his battered satchel. “I’ve got the paperwork with me.”

  “I think I should meet the girl before I sign anything.”

  “A sensible precaution, but Edwina and sensible precautions haven’t been on speaking terms in years.” Wilcox unzipped his satchel, rooted around, and pulled out a file folder labeled Sabacthani. “I’m afraid you must either accept the job right now or send me off in search of another ethicist.”

  “One hundred thousand dollars? No fine print?”

  “None required—the bold print is outrageous enough. Edwina expects you to drop everything, fly to Key West on Friday, and be prepared to give Londa her first lesson starting at ten o’clock Monday morning. On my way over here I made your plane reservations, and my graduate assistant will sublet your apartment and forward your mail. Don’t worry about your worldly possessions. We’ll crate everything up and ship it to you.”

  “No moral center,” I said. “What could that possibly mean?”

  Wilcox shrugged, then set the contract on the table, taking care to avoid the liquid rings stamped by our beer glasses. “Your liaison in Key West will be Edwina’s colleague Vincent Charnock, another biologist. Maybe he can answer your questions.”

  I retrieved a ballpoint pen from my jacket and clicked the cartridge into place. “One hundred thousand?”

  “Plus room, board, and travel expenses.” Wilcox ate a pretzel. “By the way, it was third grade, and it was the ankylosaur, so here I am at Hawthorne, working it all out.”

  A Helpful Story, a Devious Storm, the Weird Directions, the Difficult Wait, the Risky Wait, the Happy Appointment, the Familiar Property, the Safety Sign, the Frightened Enemy

  Diane Williams

  THERE WAS SOMETHING LEGENDARY about the bird and also about the gloom that had set in. The sky twisted up again and the sun was produced.

  I thought this is not going to end well and I saw the unremarkable sparrow until it did this one thing—this, this is not going to turn out the way I want it to end. It flew full speed toward the fence. Just inches in front of the fence, the bird folds its wings out—then stretches its body into a dart shape, inhales deeply, passes through the slats at top speed.

  I can’t think what else I am interested in. I dragged myself in the summer of that year. I had just finished monkeying with my lips with a moisturizing stick, while through habit, I kept up with all my basic dreams. My gingery eyebrows are thoroughly redrawn.

  I had left my orange date-book planner at the Grogg house—Angus and Barb’s.

  One of the doors inside their house led to a table and chairs. I couldn’t step into, say, the dining room and look around.

  “What’s this?” I said. “I can’t say I like that.” Mrs. Grogg stuck the tips of her fingers against my breast to push me back.

  “She’s still here, Angus!” she called. Barb said, “Come, I’ll give you a brownie if you go this way. Here, darling, look what I have.”

  My friend provided food. It’s like a personal relationship. But what if Barb Grogg is a better person than I am? I love her mind so much.

  I left a sack with presents at their house too, so I had to walk all the way back there again.

  I went there to have Mrs. Grogg hold my hand or rub my back. The rain made everything indoors wicked and weak except for the jug on her table that was cold and full because anyone can drink while repeating inner honest answers—fickle heart, broken heart, lion heart, heart of flame, proud heart.

  And how does one get to more heart-to-hearts?

  “I’ve never been happier. Haven’t you been happier?” Angus Grogg said. “Milka, come and sit next to me. I am not watching out for you anymore,” he said.

  The rain was white. It came in this way through the window. One of the drops directly touched me. I closed the window and Barb gave me rags to get the bottom of the puddles. In fact, in real life no human being can be struck for the first time by surprise.

  I had been able each time to recognize being surrounded with some hesitation that had to be gotten rid of.

  Why else would my neck hurt, where it connects with my back?—and there’s the headache—so that I felt called upon to take care.

  A carafe of water, a choice between fruits. The fruits were almost the same fruit. The red globes, the ruby seedless—they were a color of red. Angus ate his food. His skin was soaked and bluish. They had fed me, carried chairs to the table, had taken breaths, panted. “Stop it, Angus!” Barbara said. “I guess you don’t know when to stop it.”

  Barbara wears a large ring with a carbuncle in it. This time there was something legendary about the normal skin on her finger with the patches of discoloration and there were intertwining patterns of veins on her hand, each newly charged with a small quantity of blood. This matter of the blood is routine, so tragic, so shattering and I saw birds shooting their heads forward with every step they could take—out on the pounded earth, after the rain—and it worries me how painful for all of their bird necks that this must be.

  Hmmm, I felt also that the conquest of happiness, if anything, includes ample room to move about, to make an incident die down a little. I oohed as if I had pulled my skirt up, bent over, lifted my skirt on over my head, so that my head could be slid through. When I started to gasp, I sighed because an experienced person like me—Milka Grogg!—she can reach a lovely large clearing too.

  Although I am not like other people who can go there whenever they please and I’d like some leadership training.

  I gave consideration to the green scum in shallow water as I left and realized there was something amateurish about my breathing just then.

  I heard Angus say, “Is she bad?” and then music went on inside.

  You’d think that I had been out of bounds the way I scrambled to get back to where I was and I started out on my course outside. I curved back and landed, with a side spin like that! Impossible. I can’t imagine a more sophisticated and powerful maneuver and I looked at my arms. Wow.

  The Boat

  Nam Le

  THE STORM CAME ON QUICKLY. The crosswind surged in, filtering through the apertures in the rotten wood, sounding like a chorus of low moans. The boat began to rock. Hugging a beam at the top of the hatch, Mai looked out and her breath stopped: the boat had heeled so steeply that all she saw was an enormous wall of black-green water bearing down; she shut her eyes, opened them again—now the gunwale had crested the water—the ocean completely vanished—and it was as though they were soaring through the air, the sky around them dark and inky and shifting.

  A body collided into hers, slammed her against the side of the hatch door. The boat righted and she slipped again, skidding in jets of water down the companionway. The hatch banged shut. Other bodies—she was on top of them—thighs and ribs and arms and heads—jammed this way and that with each groaning tilt, writhing toward space as though impelling the boat to heave to, back into the wind. The rocking got worse. Light was falling fast now and inside the hold it had become uncannily dim.

  Inches away from Mai’s face, a cross-legged man tipped forward, coughed once into his hands, then keeled back onto his elbows. His face was expressionless. When the smell arrived she realized he had vomited. In the swaying half dark, people pitched forward and back, one by one, adding to the slosh of saltwater and urine in the bilge. People threw up in plastic bags, which they then passed on, hand to hand, until the parcel reached someone next to a scupper.

  “Here.”

  Mai pinched the bag, tried to squeeze it out through the draining slit, but her fingers lost their hold as the boat bucked. The thin yellow juice sprayed into her lap.

  On the steps below her, a
n infant started crying: short choking bursts.

  Instantly she looked for Truong—there he was, knees drawn up to his chin, face as smooth and impassive as that of a ceramic toy soldier. Their eyes met. Nothing she could do. He was wedged between an older couple at the bottom of the steps. Where was Quyen? She shook off the automatic anxiety.

  Finally the storm arrived in force. The remaining light drained out of the hold. Wind screamed through the cracks. She felt the panicked limbs, people clawing for direction, sudden slaps of ice-cold water, the banging and shapeless shouts from the deck above. The whole world reeled. Everywhere the stink of vomit. Her stomach forced up, squashed through her throat. So this was what it was like, she thought, the moment before death.

  She closed her eyes, swallowed compulsively, tried to close out the crawling blackness, the howl of the wind. She tried to recall her father’s stories—storms at sea, waves ten, fifteen meters high!—but they rang shallow against what she’d just seen: those dense roaring slabs of water, sky churning overhead like a puddle being mucked with a stick. She was crammed in by a boatload of human bodies, thinking of her father and becoming overwhelmed, slowly, with loneliness. As much loneliness as fear. Concentrate, she told herself. And she did—forcing herself to concentrate, if not—if she was unable to—on the thought of her family, then on the contact of flesh pressed against her on every side, the human warmth, feeling every square inch of skin against her body and through it the shared consciousness of—what? Death? Fear? Surrender? She stayed in that human cocoon, heaving and rolling, concentrating, until it was over.

  She opened her eyes. A procession of people stepping over her, measuredly, as though hypnotized, up the companionway and onto the deck. She got up and followed them.