In the Fall They Come Back

by Robert Bausch

  “Is it too hot in here for you?”

  “No, sir.”

  He smiled. “You should go now. But come back tomorrow morning.”

  I was sort of shocked that he dismissed me so suddenly. He took the glass in his hand and carefully removed the chalk, studied it for a moment, then put it back. “Not soaked enough,” he said. Then he seemed surprised to see me still sitting there across from him.

  “Come back tomorrow morning,” he said gently. “Bring cigarettes please. Marlboros or Camels, either one.”

  “Okay.” I got up and went to the door.

  “I’ll show you something you won’t soon forget,” he said.

  “Really.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Come back tomorrow.”

  The next morning, after I had unloaded all my students and parked the bus behind the school, I went to Bible’s room with a pack of Camel Lights. When I tried to hand them to him, he stopped me.

  “I don’t want them.”

  “I thought you said …”

  “Oh, I’ll have one, today sometime. But I don’t want the pack. I can’t have the pack. Anyway I’d rather not smoke Lights.” He waved his hand, dismissing the idea, then he got up from his desk and went to the chalkboard. He picked up the chalk and began to write, and I could hear the chalk hitting the board, making that sound chalk makes, but nothing appeared. It was as if he were writing with a piece of plastic that sounded like chalk. But he kept writing. Then he stopped and turned around to face me. “There,” he said. “You can see what I wanted to show you.”

  There was nothing on the board. I stared at it, then turned my eyes back to him. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There’s a blackboard there.”

  “I see that,” I said, and as I spoke, I noticed something beginning to appear on the board. Gradually, what he wrote became clear, and it was in chalk. He wrote:

  This is invisible chalk. It only becomes visible when the person looking for it begins to realize that he is ready to learn.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked. I really was amazed.

  “That chalk I showed you yesterday? I soaked it. Took it out last night. It dries hard again, but now it’s moist. It has water in it, and you can’t see it until it hits the air and dries.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “It gets their attention,” he said. “And that’s what we want, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled. Then he said, “Did you notice little George Meeker this morning?”

  “He was fine. He doesn’t talk much.”

  “Sometimes he will.”

  “What should I do if … if he …”

  “Just let me know. It may not be a problem this year. We turned it over to Protective Services and things seemed to settle down after that.” He smiled sort of ruefully, then he said, “Of course, now George won’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Just keep a close eye on him.”

  “I will.”

  He handed me the chalk. “You can use it for your classes today.”

  I thanked him, and he put his hand on my shoulder and guided me to the door. “Don’t forget,” he said. “A cigarette sometime today. It will taste very good.”

  I told him I wouldn’t forget, and eventually I gave him plenty, but you know I can’t remember if I ever went back that day and gave him a cigarette. I might have, but I don’t remember it. I had so much fun with the damned chalk that day, just writing on the board and watching it come into view. Of course it amazed every one of my students. They gasped in surprise then laughed. We were a bit noisy, but it got their attention.

  I broke a little piece of the chalk off and took it home to show Annie. On the little chalkboard we have in our kitchen I wrote “I love you,” and then let her watch it gradually become visible. She thought it was funny. “It won’t fade away like it faded in, will it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m not talking about the chalk,” she said.

  I laughed. “Never in a million years.”

  Annie was only five feet two inches tall. I’m almost a foot taller, but I was never as overbearing as the size difference might suggest. In fact, she pretty much told me what to do most of the time and I did it. I convinced myself that I wanted to keep the peace in our house, but the truth was I was a little afraid of her. She was very good-looking—dark black hair, wide, white, straight-toothed smile and large dark eyes—and I could not believe that she had fallen in love with me. No matter how I turned myself in front of the mirror, I thought I looked like an odd amalgam of Mr. Rogers, of children’s TV fame, and Abraham Lincoln before the famous beard. At any rate, I was surely not the kind of man who “landed” women like Annie. So I didn’t want to stand up to her in a way that might alienate her or clear up her eyesight long enough for her to get a good look at me. The fact that she loved me was miraculous, and that miracle was all I needed to persuade myself that I loved her, too. I thought we were going to have this great life. Among the two or three most disappointing things about all of this is that I came to see that the whole time I was living with Annie, believing I was so happy, I had mistaken gratitude for love.

  4

  Intimations

  When I got back home after classes during those first heady weeks, I’d spend the afternoon going over class rolls, studying names, and making notes for the next day. It was early yet, and I didn’t know any of my students well enough to have an idea about what I might be able to accomplish with them, but I felt so goddamn lucky. I’d forgotten about law school. I was done with being a student for a while. I believed I could probably keep working at Glenn Acres all the way to the end of the decade. (It’s funny how things work out. By 1988 I was already in law school. There were two whole years left in the decade and Glenn Acres was already behind me.) The salary was not great, but it was so much better than what I’d been making; Annie and I actually felt sort of well off. I was so energized and ready to go each day. Thinking about it now, I admit I was also a little ambitious. I wanted to do a reasonably good job—I wanted to be memorable. I don’t think anybody wants to be a bad teacher.

  As the session wore on, my days got to be incredibly full. I taught one freshman class—ninth graders—two sophomore classes, one junior, and one senior class. There were twenty-eight seniors; forty-eight sophomores (two classes with twenty-four in each), twenty-six juniors, and thirty-one freshmen. My first class met at eight in the morning—the juniors. Then I had sophomores at nine and eleven, and the freshmen at ten and the seniors at one P.M.

  I left school at two fifteen every day, drove my students to their homes, and then I’d park the bus in the back lot of my apartment building, walk up to my place, and spend the afternoon grading the work I’d collected during the day. On Fridays, I’d crash on my couch and sleep the whole afternoon, putting off all that work until Sunday night. I fell into that routine, and enjoyed it completely. I didn’t think about the future much. I was just too busy.

  At first, I tried to be careful when I wrote in the margins of the papers I graded. I didn’t want to be like all of the teachers who had commented on my work throughout my years of schooling. I would avoid saying those things that my high school teachers had said to me. Things like: “Did you bother to proofread this drivel?” Or, “Is your mind so small that you have to repeat this construction over and over?” Or, “Did you sleep through all your English classes in middle school?” I would not condescend to my students. I’d avoid comments like, “You should not be in a college preparatory class,” or “You should think about getting into the vocational program,” or, “You are woefully unprepared for this level of work. See me.” (I always hated it when my teachers wrote “see me” on my papers when I was in college. It didn’t mean they wanted to help me; it meant they wanted to talk me into dropping the class. One professor, in an advanced astronomy clas
s, actually said to me, “How’d you get in here?”)

  I hoped to be a different kind of teacher, and I think overall, I was. It is a fair assertion to say that I listened to my students, and tried to draw them out. I encouraged them if I could and gave them hope and belief in what they were doing.

  One day after school Annie got home from work pretty late, and I didn’t feel like cooking, so we went to Arby’s and got roast beef sandwiches. I’d been teaching for a while but we hadn’t talked much about it after the first day, so when we were seated at the table and unwrapping our food, I started talking about my day. I mentioned Professor Bible.

  She said, “Who’s he again?”

  “He’s the old guy. Hair as white as a wedding gown. Thick, too.”

  “What’s he teach?”

  “Social Studies, and History.”

  She poured a large amount of white horsey and red barbecue sauce on her roast beef, then covered it with the top bun and tried to lift it without letting it leak down the side of her hand and back onto the napkin in front of her. Her face was a study in concentration.

  I should tell you a little more about Annie. I’ve already said she was pretty, and that I was a little afraid of her. She had a way of ruining my sense of well-being just with a look, or with the tone of her voice. Not that I feared physical harm. I was constantly worried about a sudden loss of affection, and she was always capable of disarming me. “Fuck you” was one of her favorite expressions. She used it judiciously—only when she wanted to end discussion, or when she wanted to begin one. When she ended a discussion with “fuck you,” it really was the last thing she would say—sometimes for hours. When she began a discussion with “fuck you” it was usually followed by the conditional form of some proposition—to wit, “Fuck you if you think I’m going to the beach this weekend.” Or, “Fuck you if you don’t want to eat out tonight.” Or, “Fuck you if you want to be such a neat freak.”

  Anyway, that afternoon at Arby’s I watched her struggle with her sandwich. She turned her head to take a bite. While she was chewing, I said, “Professor Bible’s just one of those guys, you know? You can tell he’s interesting. He knows a lot and he’s got a lot of experience. Mrs. Creighton said the kids love him.”

  “So he’s old enough to be harmless.”

  “I think I might learn a few things from him. He said he would teach me things if I …” I stopped. It occurred to me that the proviso that I keep him in cigarettes would probably diminish the promise of what I might learn. “He is just so imposing.”

  “He might teach you things? He said that?”

  I pointed to her chin. “You’ve got …”

  “What?” She had a little Statue of Liberty-shaped strip of horsey sauce and red barbecue smeared from the corner of her mouth to her jawline.

  “Barbecue sauce,” I said.

  She wiped the lower half of her face with a napkin. “Why would anybody announce that he will teach you things?”

  “That’s why I think he’s interesting. You know what he said to me when I was leaving today?”

  “What?”

  “He wanted to know if I was a Marxist. I told him that I was just the English guy, and he laughed. It was a good laugh. I don’t think he takes himself too seriously.”

  “Does anybody even pay attention to Marxists anymore?” Annie wanted to know.

  “Reagan does.”

  “The only Marx he knows is Groucho.”

  “Well, he’s met Gorbachev,” I said.

  “Gorbachev’s not a Marxist.”

  I took another careful bite of my sandwich. We ate quietly for a while, looking out the window.

  “Did you see any bruises or marks today?” she asked. I had told her about George Meeker.

  “No. He looked fine.” Another perfectly spotless bite of my sandwich. I held it close, over the paper, but I didn’t use too much sauce, so it was fairly easy to keep the thing clean.

  “Have you gotten to know anybody else on the faculty?” Annie burbled, through a stout mixture of sauce, meat, and bun.

  I told her about the others. She was curious about Doreen Corrigan.

  “Is she attractive?”

  “I think she’s a lesbian.”

  “Really. What makes you think that?”

  “She’s kind of boyish—you know. Masculine and …” I didn’t finish the sentence. Annie frowned and her eyes looked slightly out of alignment—as though one of them might lazily wander off in another direction. Horsey sauce dripped down both sides of her mouth. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “You look like you’ve just been devouring a dead skunk or something.” I reached across the table with my napkin and wiped the sauce off her mouth. She leaned toward me a little, to let me get all of it. Her hands were still sauce-dipped, and the sandwich was again beginning to fall apart as she tried to negotiate it into position for another bite.

  “Damn you make a mess,” I said.

  She laughed, or seemed to. Her mouth was full, so it was hard to tell. When she was done chewing, she said, “Important dating tip for our children. Never order an Arby’s Roast Beef sandwich.”

  Sometimes I liked it when she made references about our children like that—it meant she saw us together in the future. Other times, I didn’t like it so much. It could get to feel like a kind of intimation or hint of pressure to go ahead and do something about our relationship. On this night, it was charming and I smiled. “Never douse your sandwich in a half a gallon of sauce.” I held my unsoiled fingers up, and then took another clean bite. “There’s a way to do it that’s not so messy.”

  She shook her head and called me a snob.

  After a long pause she said, “Why do men always think they know a lesbian when they see one?”

  “I didn’t say I knew it. I said I thought she might be. The way she dresses and all …”

  Annie shook her head. “Men,” she said.

  “So, is it your contention that most gays, male and female, do not have a certain way of carrying themselves and often do not dress in a certain way?”

  “Wow. You already sound like a professor. So perfectly pompous.”

  “I just appear pompous to you because my mouth is clean,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” Annie said, which of course ended the discussion.

  When we were finished eating and were walking to the car, I said, “I really like Mrs. Creighton, but I think she’s a bit on the ditzy side.”

  “Why?”

  I told her about North and South, the odor in the math room. She already knew how my interview had gone.

  “You’re going to have a ball in that place,” Annie said. She laughed a little too loudly about the dogs and North’s morning deposits, but I could tell she wasn’t pissed off anymore.

  “Mr. Clean really is an awful smell,” I said. “I think it might be better if she just used water to clean it up and let everybody get used to the smell of shit in that room.”

  “Can’t she keep the dogs somewhere else?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Does she live there?”

  “No. She gets there before dawn every morning.”

  We drove home in silence. When I unlocked the door to our apartment, Annie went immediately to the bathroom to wash her face. When she came back, she patted me on the shoulder and I took hold of her hand and pulled her into my arms. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I don’t know why but when she was in the bathroom I got this picture of her with the horsey sauce all over her face and I felt profoundly sorry for her. It was the strangest thing. I didn’t say anything, though; I just kissed her on the cheek and told her I loved her. We sat on the couch for a while, and then I got up to put on some music. I picked out something by Fauré but before I could turn it on, she said, “So you’re an English teacher.”

  “Yeah. Hard to believe isn’t it?”

  “Do you know where to start?”

  “I’m getting them to write. I’m a writing teacher.”

  “And reading?
”

  “Of course.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  I didn’t like her tone. “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m going to be trying to do the impossible?”

  “I guess I just remember what it was like being in high school English classes.”

  “So do I.”

  She said nothing. I put the record on and then turned the volume down low. When I came back I said, “My classes will be different.”

  “You think so.”

  “I know so.”

  “Well, like I said. ‘Good luck.’ ”

  “That’s what I love about you,” I said. “Your abiding faith in me.”

  “I have faith in you. It’s the students I’m worried about.”

  5

  Before My Helpless Sight

  I got lost in the work with my students and their writing those first few months, but I remembered to keep a close eye on George Meeker. It wasn’t hard to do that—he really was different. He was short for a junior, almost diminutive; small-boned and thin. His horn-rimmed glasses alone would have made him stand out from the others, but he kept his hair cut close to his skull and he was always dressed in a suit with a white shirt and tie and highly shined shoes. He had keen, deep-set eyes that frequently looked worn—as though he had not slept in a long time—but he was always awake and attentive in my class. He read books in his spare time, so he was one of those students who would get your attention anyway; he could talk about almost anything, and on occasion the others accused him of being a know-it-all. He was also mercilessly teased for his short stature, his shyness, and his name. Meeker. What could be more ironic? God has a plan alright and it’s not mysterious. I think it is utterly diabolical.

  I strived to protect George from the other students, at least in my class, but I could not vouch for what might have been happening to him in other classes, or outside in the break area. George was a little boy in every feature, but he was trying desperately to be a man; to kill the little boy in himself. This spectacle was frequently hard to watch. But he never looked bad or injured. He was good-spirited, and had a lot to say in class. He wrote about ordinary things: fishing with his father, going to the library and checking out books on dinosaurs; the unfairness of late fees for slow readers. He did not withdraw from the fray, as it were, and he stood up to the teasing and harassment of the others. I got to be kind of proud of him in those first few months.