With the regularity of a scrupulous timekeeper, I regained consciousness at precisely three minutes from first staggering against the lockers. I hoped for an inconspicuous awakening, but I had collapsed to a bended knee at some point during my interlude from reality. At least this hallway remained mostly absent of interfering eyes. I noticed only two students glancing at me from near their lockers, but neither gave me more than a few seconds of poker-faced scrutiny. In an attempt to further conceal my present condition, I elevated to my feet slowly while extending a poised gesture toward the students to indicate stability.
This strategy was far from foolproof, for my vertigo remained potent enough to keep me leaning feebly against the wall for at least thirty seconds after I stood upright. Although comparatively brief to an outright episode, this lapse of time compromised my ability to return to my classroom without being intercepted by unsolicited company. Such a nuisance had already interrupted me once this morning, and judging by the escalating sound of his whistled mark upon a given scene, I suspected that he exerted himself to meet with me again.
The custodian must have already noticed my disheveled appearance before approaching with his broom and dustpan. The evidence of his thoroughness was unmistakable. I couldn’t detect as much as a discarded paperclip on the glossy floor where I waited unwillingly for his return. He evidently worked with continuous vigor. If my eyes served me justly, I had yet to see a janitor other than him in the school during the morning hours. Aside from his signature melody, I also distinguished the same peculiar odor as before. I still couldn’t assign an origin to this scent.
Rather than screen my disorientation from the custodian’s inspection, I remained stationary against the lockers until his broom nudged the tips of my shoes. Maybe I partly expected him to acknowledge my current frailty with some sort of contrived pity, but he continued to whistle Rachmaninoff’s tune cavalierly with no obvious regard for my welfare.
“Your timing is impeccable,” I said, sardonically. The custodian might’ve misconstrued my sarcasm, but at least I managed to temporarily stifle his melody. He then edged closer to my position, whimsically pirouetting around his broom’s handle as if engaged in a dance designed to vex me.
“When the school’s hallway starts looking like a practical spot to nap,” he started, “then you got to ask yourself if you’re getting enough sleep.”
My suspicions were now confirmed. This custodian had witnessed my latest blackout, and he seemed proficiently prepared to antagonize me. “Those dark circles under your eyes aren’t getting any lighter, Cobbs. Did I mention the old remedy with cucumbers?”
“Forget about the cucumbers,” I said, huffily. “If it’s okay with you—and even if it isn’t—I’d rather not talk about how crappy I look.”
The custodian squinted his eyes in an exaggerated manner before resorting to a bad John Wayne impression. “Whoa, take it easy, cowboy. You know, a lack of shuteye can make folks a tad terse. Is that what I’m a-hearin’, pilgrim?”
“Just drop it,” I said.
The custodian resumed his normal voice before continuing. “I’m only trying to keep this place spick-and-span. You know, not too many folks would admit as much, but I really like cleaning up the messes of other people. It keeps me grounded.”
I subdued an impulse to criticize this man because my other problems made his shtick sound banal in comparison. After all, I viewed his presence as nothing more irritating than a mild itch between my shoulder blades. Rather than entertain his anecdotes, I decided to sever the thread of conversation before becoming entwined by anymore of his hearsay. An anxious glance at my watch provided the cue for a hasty departure.
“I didn’t realize the time,” I bluffed. “Can’t be late for first period, right?”
The custodian’s lips lengthened into a synthetic smile, displaying teeth that matched the shade of a crisp sheet of notebook paper. As always, he looked at me as if he had already internalized my most guarded thoughts. “It might not be any of my business,” he remarked brashly, “but did you happen to notice the way that sexy, young vixen was ogling you a few minutes ago? She was gawking at you like a famished doe eyeing an apple tree.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that the custodian had conveniently spied on my encounter with Miss Dixon. Naturally, I attempted to remain ignorant to his allegation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah, come on, Cobbs. You don’t need to get all gentlemanly with me. We can chat like old friends.”
“But we’re not old friends,” I reminded him.
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings now?”
“Look, I don’t know what you think you saw, but Miss Dixon and I are strictly friends and colleagues, nothing more.” Even as I mouthed this defense, I sensed a sliver of indecision vibrating in my voice. The custodian honed in upon this fluctuation in tone as if I sounded like a mistuned violin.
“I’ve seen where such friendships can lead a fellow,” he said, deprecatingly.
“I don’t need to remind you that I’m a married guy, do I?”
“The ring on your finger unravels that yarn,” he remarked, motioning to my left hand. The tarnished gold band dangled loosely against my knuckle; this was yet another indication of my weight loss. “Don’t think I’m here to judge you, Cobbs. Heck, there’s plenty of pent up fellows bopping around this joint who’d give half their pensions and a plump sum of alimony to be in your shoes.”
Somehow I doubted the veracity of this claim. But at the moment I had neither the time nor tolerance to persuade this custodian to believe otherwise. It might’ve been wiser for me to simply walk away without imparting further suggestions, but I wanted to avoid any future conversations pertaining to this topic or any other that infringed upon my personal business.
“I don’t want this to turn into a big deal,” I started, “but you better be careful about making false accusations against people. Furthermore, I find what you’re implying offensive. Am I being clear?”
“Vividly,” he smirked. “Hey, I’m a good sport. We’ll play by your rules if it makes you feel any less guilty.”
“Guilty? Of what?”
He must’ve noticed me gnawing rapaciously on my bottom lip; it was an old habit that unconsciously surfaced when I became exasperated beyond words. “You don’t have to get all-uptight over this,” he resumed. “It’s not like I’m going to tell your wife that you have an occasional fantasy with a hot doxy in the hallway. After all, you can’t be green enough to believe that she doesn’t bend toward a few taboo thoughts of her own now and again. Do you get my drift?”
“I think you’ve been inhaling too much floor wax,” I said, realizing that the pungent and still unknown odor had intensified since I spoke with him earlier. The custodian currently held a broom and dustpan in his possession, which didn’t adequately explain the toxic smell in my mind. “Please, I just want you to leave me alone for the rest of today. Is that asking too much of a favor?”
The custodian nodded his chin compliantly while swiveling the broom against the lockers to sweep nothing visible into the pan in front of his work boots. “Pardon me for overstepping my boundaries again,” he murmured. “But if you really want to know the truth, I’m just watching your back, Cobbs. Frankly, I’m not one to gorge on gossip, but I’d be less than sincere with you if I claimed that there’s not folks in this building who feast on rumors like a pack of jackals on zebra scraps.”
“Well, let all of them eat until their bellies explode,” I stated robustly. “In fact, as pathetic as it might sound, I don’t have any secrets worth whispering about. They’re all going to be gravely disappointed when they find out how boring I really am.”
The custodian continued to maneuver his broom like a surgeon’s scalpel along the floor’s crevices, extracting dust molecules that only a highly trained veteran could’ve detected. Yet, despite my self-deprecating evaluation, his green eyes darkened a shade, reminding me of sunlight fading from a field of shamrocks. By s
ome miracle, and for reasons that I couldn’t yet comprehend, he had an uncanny knack for transmitting his reservations to me without uttering a coherent syllable or expression. But, of course, this hardly prevented his lips from spouting like an active geyser at Yellowstone.
“My father once told me that a new broom sweeps clean,” he said, while fixating on the swath of his tool’s bristles. “That may be right on the mark, Cobbs, but who’s to say that an old broom can’t do an equally dandy job? Am I fingering all the right notes for you now, maestro?”
My disposition softened momentarily. In truth, I owned some culpability in this custodian’s reckless bid to befriend me. Because of my chronic passiveness, I allowed this man to swerve into an unchecked lane in my life that he had every intention to traffic. Now he felt entitled to tailgate me whenever the occasion called for it. If a practical escape route existed for me at this point, I’d have to proceed tactfully.
“I’m sorry if I seem a little testy this morning,” I said. “I guess you just caught me at an awkward moment. I thought I could make it through the day, but I’m not so sure now. My dizziness seems to be getting worse.”
“Hey, I’m no doctor, Cobbs, but a brainiac like you should know when it’s time to seek some medical help.”
“That’s already been taken care of. I’m just hoping to keep my sickness private right now. Is that understood?” The custodian halted his sweeping motion and mimed a zipper’s action by tracing his fingers vertically across his lips. “Then I can trust that you’ll keep quiet about this?”
“Don’t give two thoughts to it,” he assured me. I wanted to believe him, but a peculiar grin belied his pledge. He looked as wily as a feral cat with a fan of canary feathers poking out of its mouth.
“I hope I can trust you. There’s nothing more humiliating than being branded as the ‘sick guy at work.’ I don’t want anyone treating me differently.”
“They won’t get anything but mum stares from me, Cobbs.”
Nothing the custodian promised me instilled confidence, but I had very little time to haggle over his integrity at the moment. I managed to take five steps away from him before his leaky lips dripped out more information that I didn’t care to know about.
“Hey, before you go, I wanted to remind you about the fire drill later on,” he said. “Don’t forget—it’s Thursday.” I continued to stride up the corridor, purposely dodging the bait he cast in my direction. But a persistent lure-man rarely hooked his prey with a single effort. I suspected this custodian would’ve hurled chum into the channels until reeling me into his squalid craft of speculation.
“Go ahead and ignore me if you like, Cobbs,” he griped. “But I have a sneaky hunch that you’ll find a way to stroll by Lemus’s office.”
Rather than contradict the custodian’s conniving prediction, I increased my pace until I was well out of earshot from his voice. Of course, I had no disillusions that my method of avoidance would’ve sufficed for the rest of this day. At least my classroom provided an impermanent refuge from his company. I managed to get back there with still a few minutes remaining before first period.
A couple of students normally scuttled into my classroom five minutes early. Thankfully, they were late this morning. Even with a few moments of isolation preserved, I checked the hallway twice in both directions to make sure that the custodian wasn’t following me. The obligations of work then consumed my thoughts. For a teacher, there was no faster guarantee to sabotage a day than to come to class without a lesson plan. After nearly twenty years at the helm of a high school English class, I understood the impetus of most seventeen-year-old students. Literature rarely made their lists. For the most part, the majority of my charges weren’t even remotely intrigued by Shakespeare’s wordplay or the measured verse of iambic pentameter. Therefore, I had an unenviable task of selling classic prose and poetry to a crowd who would’ve rather lopped off their own ears than invest energy in the pages of a book.
I routinely started each lesson with a writing exercise, which in theory was designed to get my students into the classroom and working right away. My journal prompts were customarily written in the same location on the whiteboard. It was a standard practice of mine to somehow relate the material we studied with events that might’ve mattered to them. Since we were currently reading Homer’s epic poem, ‘The Iliad’, an essay on modern heroism seemed appropriate. For the journal entry today, however, I decided to create an exercise that matched my mood.
I then printed the following words in black dry-erase marker on the whiteboard: Do you feel most comfortable when following a routine? Are you more likely to settle on something you know, or would you rather take a chance on the unknown? What is the most unpredictable thing you’ve done in your life thus far? (5--10 lines)
Even before I finished writing this prompt, I pondered the impact of my notions. If I earnestly attempted to answer my own journal entry, what insight might have I discovered about myself? Perhaps the realization was too paralyzing to endure. Inevitably, my meandering ideas strayed to Rachel again. I wondered what she was doing at this very second. As much as it distressed me to deem her as an unfaithful wife, I couldn’t displace my bitterness. Maybe she was in bed, accompanied by the man who was once like a brother to me. Did she feel any sense of betrayal for her sordid deeds? Or had she already dismissed my emotions entirely? These were questions I needed to ask her now more than ever before.
I hunched behind my desk as if suddenly stricken by an arthritic spasm. This time I managed to avoid toppling to the floor before the onset of my spell became too arduous. Whatever I valued about my life before this morning had changed dramatically in the first few hours since I awakened. The dreams and knowledge of my past had transmuted into something infinitely more powerful. I couldn’t control these pulsations of creativity firing through my mind’s synapses in quicksilver succession. My actions now belonged to the places etched within my brain since childhood. As I closed my eyes to venture forth into yet another uncultivated region, memories of my own irrelevance reverberated against my temples. It sounded like the fading heartbeat of a dying man.
Chapter 16
7:27 A.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 15