by Jaime Clarke
Smurf’s plan went awry immediately, however, as Roger discovered him in the bathroom in the middle of the night. “I’m back!” Smurf was surprised into saying, to which Roger grunted. Smurf lay awake in his room, adjusting his plan accordingly as the sun’s yoke appeared on the horizon. He would let Assburn and Roger be the messengers of his return; it would lessen Mr. Hancock’s shock. The key would be to show at breakfast after it had started, long enough for Mr. Hancock to hear the rumor of his return, but not long enough for him to go to Mr. Malagon. Smurf recognized the delicate timing this amendment required and crept downstairs to lie on the couch, where his housemates found him the next morning.
As the rest of us headed to breakfast, Smurf panicked, changing his plan, which he knew was dangerous. He decided to approach Mr. Malagon first, to cement their story. There was a good chance Mr. Malagon would see him anyway, as he had to pass in front of Mr. Malagon’s house on his way to breakfast, and it wouldn’t do to have him come screaming out of his house, in plain view of the dining-hall windows, drawing Mr. Hancock’s attention.
Smurf knocked lightly on Mr. Malagon’s door. He knocked again using his knuckles. The house was silent. Smurf pounded on the front door, and the door broke open, pieces of the doorframe scattering at his feet. The living room and kitchen were dark, and Smurf called out Mr. Malagon’s name. Fearing that Mr. Malagon had been made sicker than Smurf intended, he thundered up the stairs, sure Mr. Malagon was hunched over the toilet or retching over the side of his bed into a garbage can. Instead, he found cool darkness. He backtracked out of the house, closing Mr. Malagon’s door as best he could, though it wouldn’t close properly. He did what he could to stifle the panic that somehow his and Katie’s plan had been botched. He imagined Mr. Malagon in the hospital, hipped to the plot by an emergency-room doctor in a long white coat.
We noticed Smurf in waves, the murmur of those who looked up from their bowls of cereal provoking the rest of us until we all saw Smurf standing tentatively in the doorway, his eyes roaming the tables for Mr. Hancock. The sophomores steered clear of Smurf, avoiding him as they would a predator. Finally, Assburn, who would later die plunging into a frozen lake somewhere between Canada and Detroit, driving across the ice, smuggling counterfeit game systems in order to raise bail money for his best friend, called out to Smurf, and Smurf took a seat at Assburn’s table. What we didn’t know then but would find out later was that Assburn had been providing Smurf with a day-to-day summary of life at Garden Lakes in Smurf’s absence, a duty he’d performed religiously since Smurf lured Assburn out into the Grove with a note placed under Assburn’s pillow, along with Senator Quinn’s pen.
We were astounded by Smurf’s redemption. Those of us who doubted Smurf’s story were the first to realize that neither Mr. Hancock nor Mr. Malagon had made it to breakfast.
The blunder that left Mr. Hancock’s absence unrectified was purely administrative—Principal Breen, distracted by surprise divorce proceedings, misunderstood the petition Mr. Hancock made to be replaced once he left Garden Lakes, thinking that Mr. Hancock would let him know if Mr. Hancock’s family emergency meant a replacement was needed. Mr. Hancock believed a substitute had been sent and was frankly glad to be relieved of his duties with respect to Garden Lakes. The rest of the summer was spent contemplating whether to appeal to Principal Breen about finding a permanent replacement. The leadership program sapped too much of his energies, leaving him spent come the fall. The admission left him feeling elderly, but he could not deny the joy he felt at having the remainder of his summer to entertain any fancy he could dream up, and to be free from a student body that became increasingly foreign each year.
Mr. Malagon, we would later learn, had left to drive Katie Sullivan to North Carolina—with her parents’ permission—using the occasion of the trip to try to change her mind about leaving. Mr. Malagon would later claim that he believed Mr. Hancock had returned and that, while he regretted abandoning his responsibilities at Garden Lakes, he wouldn’t have endangered us had he known that the administration had failed to send a replacement for Mr. Hancock.
The confusion surrounding both Mr. Hancock’s nonreturn and Mr. Malagon’s disappearance was quickly muted by Figs and Hands, who called us together in the chapel to suggest that Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon were testing us, relying on a campus rumor about just that, though we never thought it was anything more than legend.
“It’s in our interest to keep the schedule,” Figs said convincingly. “If it is a test, and Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon show up at lunchtime, or at dinner, and find us off the schedule, we’ll have failed.”
Hands concurred. “They’ll probably be back by lunch.”
“Bullshit,” Roger said.
Figs and Hands winced. Figs beat a tattoo on the carpet with his right foot and then looked Roger straight in the eye. “No one is being forced,” he said. “Anyone can do whatever they want.”
A hush descended. We could not fathom either Mr. Hancock’s or Mr. Malagon’s absence, never mind both, and so we complied. The sophomores fell into order in the kitchen, Hands volunteering to manage them; the rest of us took up the taping and beading at 1959 Regis Street. Figs attempted to direct who should work in which room, but Roger, who would one day go AWOL in Iraq with a platoon of men and be court-martialed for killing one of them after the soldier was wounded by enemy fire and begged him for a mercy killing, blatantly ignored the commands, the rest of us busying ourselves with tape guns or mixing joint compound at random.
We rushed to the dining hall for lunch, expecting to be greeted by Mr. Hancock’s and Mr. Malagon’s satisfied smiles, ready to accept our accolades for a job well done. We were disappointed, though, and paraded through the lunch line with a growing anxiety, incited by the worried looks of the sophomores as they dumped macaroni and cheese on our plates, the cheese too runny, the overboiled macaroni disintegrating in our mouths as we ate..
We gave Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon the lunch hour to appear, striving for nonchalance, which only reinforced our fear. The lunch hour expired without sign of either teacher. Roger became expansive and voluble, launching into a pointless story about how he had helped his father restore a classic automobile one summer. Those who were paying attention to the tale sat restively, aware of their violation of the schedule, but also aware that there was no one to lead the class.
Hands pulled Figs into the kitchen.
“We have to do something,” Hands said.
An army of sophomores marched through with dirty dishes. Hands motioned for Figs to follow him into the hall.
“This whole thing is going to fall apart if we don’t do something,” Hands said.
“Do you think they’re coming back?” Figs asked.
“I don’t know,” Hands said truthfully. “But if they don’t, how great will it be if we complete the fellowship anyway? That’s never been done before. This is a chance to distinguish ourselves from all the other classes of fellows.”
Figs nodded. “But how?”
Warren and Assburn sauntered into the hallway to have a look at the empty classroom, and Figs and Hands ducked back into the kitchen.
“We tell everyone we saw Mr. Malagon this morning,” Hands said.
“They’ll want to know why we didn’t mention it earlier,” Figs said.
“We’ll say Mr. Malagon told us not to,” Hands said, inventing the story on the spot. “We won’t announce it; we’ll tell a few people and let it get around.”
“What if people don’t believe us?” Figs asked.
Hands reached out and grabbed Freddy Cantu, who nearly spilled the tray of leftover macaroni and cheese he was carrying. “Cantu here will back us up,” Hands said.
“Back what up?” Cantu asked.
Hands filled Cantu in on his role in the scheme, how it was for the good of all and how Hands would make sure Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon knew of Cantu’s role, a distinction Cantu appeared to prize. Figs and Hands had their man, then, and they fanned out
across the dining room, Figs telling Warren, Hands telling Sprocket, Cantu telling the sophomores, who stood in range of Smurf.
When Smurf heard the story, his worry that his plan had gone askew subsided. Mr. Malagon had come back after all, it seemed, which fit with the narrative he was spinning. “I saw him too,” he said. “He looked sick.”
Figs awkwardly acknowledged Smurf’s confirmation, grateful for the support. With Cantu’s and Smurf’s independent corroboration, the dining hall emptied, the fellows crossing the hall to the classroom, leaving the sophomores to their kitchen work under Hands’s direction.
Without a particular lesson to study—we’d been pondering Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, discussing their aggregate diplomatic effect on the end of World War I, leading up to an exercise about the creation of the League of Nations—we spent the two hours playing hangman on the grease board, the only rule being that the solution had to be the name of a great leader. We reasoned that if Mr. Hancock or Mr. Malagon walked in on this activity, we could claim it had some educational value.
But Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon did not come, and we shuffled out of the classroom, Figs fetching the soccer ball from Mr. Malagon’s house for sports.
Hands realized that without Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon, we had our first shot at a fair match. We took the opportunity to draw up the teams that would compete the day of Open House. Hands designated himself captain, and Figs volunteered to captain the opposing team. Hands selected Warren, Smurf, and Roger, filling out his roster with sophomores of varying degrees of skill. Figs chose Assburn, Lindy, me, and the remaining sophomores. Sprocket would officiate the goal line, as usual.
The first match was a lopsided affair with Hands’s team winning four goals to none. We opted to play into the dinner hour, best two out of three, Figs’s team taking the next game. Hands complained that Lindy’s cast was an unfair advantage, Lindy using it in goal to deflect the ball with ease. “He’s not that mobile,” Figs said. Hands protested, but his team called for them to play on. The final game was tied into overtime when Smurf passed the ball to Hands and Hands drove at Lindy, who deflected goal after goal with his cast. But Hands used his foot speed and misdirection to clear a path to the goal, the ball sailing near Lindy’s head.
“In!” Sprocket called out, leaning forward in his wheelchair.
Dinner was served, though the entrée for that night—mushroom meat loaf—was ruined because the recipe was not clear about how long the meat loaves should bake, so the mushrooms layered in the middle that lent the dish its juiciness were dry and rubbery. The sophomores crumbled the meat loaves into the garbage can while the rest of us feasted on a sloppy smorgasbord from the reach-in refrigerators and cupboards.
After dinner, we swarmed around Lindy and his telescope, set up under the palm tree in the lake bed, Lindy dialing the telescope in on a constellation that we were too preoccupied to care about.
“Look,” someone said, pointing out a light in Mr. Malagon’s window. The yellow glow quelled our anxiety.
“Bet he’s resting,” Smurf said. “He seemed really sick.”
We were too in awe of the light to challenge Smurf’s diagnosis. Figs and Hands later testified that at that moment they were only relieved that their lie had turned out not to be a lie. We had no idea that it was Smurf who had turned on the bedroom light when he went to coordinate Mr. Malagon’s story to match his own and found the house empty.
“Where was he?” Lindy asked, expressing the question on all our minds.
“He didn’t say,” Smurf answered.
“I’m going to go knock on the door,” Roger said.
“I wouldn’t,” Smurf said.
“I didn’t ask what you’d do,” Roger said.
“Cool it, Roger,” Figs said.
Roger sneered at Figs and Figs flinched.
“You think you’re special.” A prickling ran across Figs’s back before Figs realized that Roger was talking to Lindy. “Why are you allowed to have that telescope, anyway?”
Lindy stood up, the front of the telescope dipping, aimed at the well-worn dirt. “Mr. Malagon bought it for me,” he said.
“Mr. Malagon bought it for me,” Roger mimicked.
“Knock it off, Roger,” Warren said. He snatched the telescope and looked through the eyepiece at nothing in particular.
“Yeah?” Roger said.
Figs looked at Hands, who was staring at Roger, waiting for Roger to react. The sophomores quieted.
“C’mon, Roger,” Figs said.
“What makes Captain Astronomy here so special?” Roger asked.
“Wow, check it out.” Warren turned the telescope away from Roger, training it on a patch of blackness, hoping to defuse Roger’s vitriol.
“Check this out,” Roger said. He seized the telescope and threw it to the ground. Warren fell back, rubbing his eye. Roger kicked the telescope in the dirt and it skidded toward Warren.
Warren withdrew as the others gathered around Roger and Lindy.
Lindy resisted the urge to reach for the telescope until Roger had stormed off. Roger gave Mr. Malagon’s lit window the bird as he passed by, shouting something the rest of us could not hear.
The next morning, Assburn hurried into the dining hall, startling the few of us who had woken for breakfast. “Warren’s gone,” he said, wheezing. He steadied himself on Figs and Hands’s table, grabbing at his side.
Figs asked him what he was talking about.
“You checked his room?” Figs asked.
“Yeah,” Assburn said. His breathing returned to normal and he sat down next to Hands.
“And?”
“His bed is made and his stuff is all there,” Assburn said, “but he’s . . . gone.”
“Has anyone seen him?” Figs asked. Sprocket shook his head, as did Lindy and Smurf.
“Christ,” Hands said under his breath.
“We’ll have to look for him,” Figs said. “Something could’ve happened to him.”
Assburn’s eyes widened. “What could’ve happened to him?”
Figs shrugged. “Nothing. Maybe.”
“Should we tell Mr. Malagon?” Assburn asked.
“I’ll let him know,” Smurf said.
A brief investigation confirmed what Assburn had described. No one had seen Warren since the night before. Figs pressed us for any strange behavior we may have observed, but we hadn’t noticed any; Warren was nothing if consistent in both his reserved bearing and his inquisitive nature. Any conversation with Warren invariably ended with you telling more than you learned, Warren’s ability to answer a question with a question unmatched in our limited experience.
Not everyone was sympathetic to Warren’s disappearance.
“Probably went home to cry to his mommy,” Roger said. “Little moody bastard.”
Figs and Hands lagged behind the rest of us as we headed toward the construction site, composing the roster of a potential search party to comb the area for any signs of Warren. Hands raised the possibility of dissent among those who would have to stay behind and do the work on 1959 Regis Street, a concern that proved prescient when Roger threw down his trowel and taping knife in protest, arguing that the labor should be borne equally.
“We need a few people to look around for an hour or so,” Hands said. “What if it was you who was missing?” he asked us.
“I suppose you and Figs will be two of the chosen ones,” Roger said.
“Figs is coordinating the search,” Hands said forcefully. “I’m going to stay here and continue with the taping.”
Surprised by this declaration, Figs stepped up. “And the search party will rejoin the construction after lunch,” he said. “We expect the search won’t take long.”
“Who’s in the search party?” Roger wanted to know.
Figs pointed with confidence, as if the matter had been previously decided: Assburn, Lindy, and I would accompany him on a door-to-door search, as well as a search of the surrounding area.
&
nbsp; “Bullshit,” Roger said. “I want to go.”
Smurf jogged up Regis Street with an urgent look. “Mr. Malagon said we should look for Warren,” he said, catching his breath.
A wave of murmuring went up.
“You told him that Warren was missing?” Assburn asked.
Smurf nodded. “He’s real sick. He looks bad. But he wants us to try to find Warren. And he wants us—he wants me—to keep him updated. He said he’ll call Warren’s parents if we don’t find him. He’s got Mr. Hancock’s mobile phone.”
“Where’s Hancock?” Roger asked.
“He’s . . .” Smurf fumbled. “He’s still visiting his family. Mr. Malagon doesn’t know when he’s coming back.”
Smurf’s mandate gave Figs’s plan weight, and Roger backed off.
“Why not supervise the sophomores?” Hands said to Roger, extending a compromise.
Roger accepted the assignment, returning his tools to Sprocket, who logged them back into the supply shed.
The search party ventured from 1959, poking our heads into each of the houses as we made our way toward the community center. Figs made the decision to enter Mr. Hancock’s residence. “If he’s hiding out,” Figs said, “Mr. Hancock’s would be a good place to do it.”