I was happy to get out of there. A snow day is like a gift from heaven—as if the gods themselves have said, “take the day off.”
On the way home I got caught in traffic. Only a mile or so from Glenn Acres, everything came to a stop. I sat there in Mrs. Creighton’s car while snow piled up all around us. I heard sirens behind me. There was nowhere to go. A fire truck came alongside the road, in the gravel of the shoulder, its siren blaring, the red lights whirling. It made its way up the highway. Whatever it was, we would not be moving for a long time. I had no cigarettes, no water in the car. The radio didn’t work.
Snow kept falling; it began to collect on the windshield wipers. But it fell straight down, so I could see out the side windows. On the windshield, only the path the blades made was free of snow. I was in the right lane. I looked at the car next to me, a Ford Escort, and realized it was Leslie Warren. She seemed to be crying. I watched her awhile, to see what might be the trouble. She did not notice me. Still the traffic did not budge.
I didn’t know whether I should keep looking at her. She was not happy about something. I wanted to ask her if she had a cigarette, but she wouldn’t look my way. She concentrated on the road in front of her, squirming a bit in the seat. I rolled my window down and tried to catch her eye. When she finally saw me, she leaned over and rolled down her window.
“Do you know what it is?” she said.
“No. I think it must be a bad accident.”
She shook her head. “Do you have a radio?”
“It’s not working.”
“I can’t get a traffic report.”
She had tears in her eyes, but she only sounded frustrated. I nodded toward the traffic in front of us and said, “It can’t last much longer.”
Then she looked at me with such pure sadness. “I have to pee.” It cost her everything to say that to me. She rolled her window back up and sat back behind the wheel. She looked like she was suffering terribly. She would not look over at me again, but her eyes told me she was fighting with every ounce of strength not to give in. Her jaw was set tightly. Every now and then she would shift angrily in her seat, then recapture whatever it was that let her sit still and bear it.
We were going to be stopped a long time. Most of the drivers up ahead had turned off their cars. Snow fell steadily and with what seemed like purpose—as if the sky was falling in great bursts of little white flakes. It was absolutely silent, except for the few motors still murmuring around us. I heard Leslie scream, “Fuck,” as loud as I’ve ever heard any one scream it.
I was wearing a long, tan overcoat and I realized it might be useful to her. So I got out of my car and stepped in thick snow around the back of hers. People in other cars watched me. I got to her window and knocked gently on it. She had seen me get out and knew I was coming around to talk to her.
I smiled. “I can help.”
She cracked the window.
“Look,” I said. “I got this big coat. You can open your door so nobody in front can see you. I’ll turn my back and hold my coat out so nobody behind us can see. You can pee and then get back in the car.”
She said nothing. She was stirring in the seat, trying not to be dancing in place fighting it. I noticed a pack of Marlboros on the console in her car.
“Seriously,” I said. “I won’t look. I’ll keep my back turned and you can make sure you’re all done and seated in the car again before I turn around. Then all you have to do is give me a cigarette, and that will be that.”
I watched her consider it. Then she put the car in park, opened the door and scooted from under the steering wheel. She did not look at me and she was in a big hurry. She picked two tissues from a small box in her console, and then she took off her jacket and threw it in the backseat. I turned around, unbuttoned my coat and held it out on both sides with my arms stretched as wide as I could, like a cape, and she squatted down and peed there in the little triangle we made between her car, the door, and my coat. It took her a long time. In the silent snow and the muttering cars, I heard her sigh with the letting go of it. Snow collected in my hair and eyebrows. I felt it collecting in the collar of my coat, beginning to leak down my neck.
I don’t know why, but I started laughing. And then she was laughing. We both absolutely howled, without changing position or looking at each other.
When she was done, she got herself back together, jumped behind the wheel, and said, “Thank you, Ben. Thank you thank you thank you.” She was still crying but now it was from the laughter. And I loved it that she called me Ben.
I buttoned my coat and turned only slightly toward her. I didn’t want to embarrass her by seeing the stream she had made. She handed me four cigarettes from her pack. “Let me know if you smoke all of these,” she said. “You are a savior.”
I took the cigarettes and made my way back to my car. We sat there for another hour, until it started to get dark. But here’s the thing: the snow continued, the cars remained exactly as they were, and Leslie never once glanced my way. She studied the traffic in front of us, looked down at her console or something on the radio dial, and back up to the traffic. But she absolutely refused to look at me. I didn’t feel bad about it. I think I understood it.
Still, doesn’t the whole episode reveal something about the precarious nature of help and gratitude? I remembered the middle-aged woman whose tire I’d changed all those years ago—how she ended up rescuing me. I wondered if Leslie knew how her four cigarettes made it possible for me to endure the boredom of sitting in traffic with no radio and nothing to read.
And why not feel like a savior once in a while? It’s a great feeling. Still, if it weren’t for my helplessly rewarding tendency for rescue, maybe things would have turned out differently.
25
Prom Night
One memorable event near the end of that first year was the prom. We all had to attend in formal attire. I think that was the first time everybody met Annie, who wore a long white sleeveless gown and spiked heels that made her look a lot taller. She wore a white pearl necklace that only made the bones in her neck and upper chest look even more silky and elegant and structurally beautiful. I really couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Doreen wore a tuxedo that looked a lot like the one I had rented, and when Annie first got a glimpse of it she looked at me and winked.
“What?” I said.
She whispered, “Didn’t you tell me Doreen was gay?”
“I said I thought she might be. I don’t know.”
“Well I guess we do now.”
“It’s just a style. She just dresses stylishly.”
“Yeah,” Annie said. “Right.”
Mr. Creighton played the guitar for part of the evening, and I think even the kids enjoyed it. He really could make a sweet, rippling sound come from that guitar, his fingers dancing over the strings, his gold rings glittering in the spotlight. He was a bit overweight, and looked like he ought to be playing “Begin the Beguine” or some other Harry James song, but there he was, under the lights, playing James Taylor, Eric Clapton, and Neil Young. He did a rendition of “Southern Cross”—just the music mind you, no singing—that had everybody in the room trying to sing it themselves. It really was kind of amazing and sad at the same time. He worked so hard under those lights, sweat running down, and Mrs. Creighton talked to the kids and paid no attention at all. The kids wouldn’t dance until Mr. Creighton sat down and let the DJ Mrs. Creighton had hired play some of “their” music. (That’s what they called it. “Their” music, as if they had made the songs themselves.)
I think Annie had fun. Everybody mentioned how beautiful she looked, and we danced a bit in spite of the obvious attention it produced from the kids. (They never expect a teacher to actually have a life outside the classroom.) I really was feeling kind of special, too—since many of my students came over to talk to us and they didn’t seem as if they wanted to avoid our company. Also, I think I looked pretty well distinguished in that tuxedo.
It w
as a hot night—one of those early summer nights when even the crickets seem to complain—and the dance was in a rented hall, about two blocks from the school. With the doors open to let in air, the sound of music probably got a lot of attention in the neighborhood. It’s just possible one of the kids invited trouble by telling friends from other schools what was going on that night, but who knows? At any rate, just when the evening was about to wind down—I’d already said “hello” to a couple of parents who had arrived to round up their kids—Doreen came running across the dance floor with a look of real panic on her face.
Annie said, “What’s the matter?”
“There’s trouble,” she said.
I sat up a bit. “What sort of trouble?”
“Mr. Creighton is trying to kick some kids out who don’t belong here, and one of them is refusing to leave.”
Annie looked hard at me and I said, “What?”
“You don’t have to go over there.”
“Of course I do.”
“He’s a big kid,” Doreen said. “I mean really big.”
“Why doesn’t somebody call the police and …” Annie didn’t finish. Doreen broke in with, “Mr. Creighton is an old man. He’s been sweating up there playing guitar all night, he’ll really get hurt if he gets into anything with this guy. Normally I’d go to Professor Bible, but he’s not here.”
“You’re sure the fellow isn’t one of ours?” I asked. “A cousin maybe? Or a big brother?”
“No. He’s a friend of somebody here. I know that. He knows somebody here.”
“Well,” I said. “Can’t you find out who that is, and have them take care of it?”
“It’s happening now,” Doreen said.
“I’ve never been very good in a crisis,” I said. “I tend to think the worst and either panic or fly off the edge and start looking for a weapon.”
Doreen was very worried. I saw her decide not to rely on me, and so of course that propelled me to my feet. “Oh, all right, I’ll go over there.”
“Stay here!” Annie said. “What do you think you can do?” But I was already moving away. I walked through the mingling kids to the entrance. There in the doorway stood Mr. Creighton, his fists curled tightly next to his pants legs, staring up at a huge kid in a Coca-Cola delivery uniform. The kid leaned toward him, a deeply resentful and threatening scowl on his face. As I approached, I heard Mr. Creighton saying, over and over, “Are you going to leave? Are you going to leave? Are you going to leave?” and the kid stood there, his fists also coiled. The muscles in his jaw rippled and his chest heaved, but he said nothing. I really believe I got there in the last five seconds before one of them would throw the first punch. It was that tense, and that close. I realized Doreen was right behind me, and perhaps it was the arrival of reinforcements that caused what followed, but it was astonishing, even to me. The big kid looked at me when I stepped into their range, and when I was close enough for him to hear me, I said, “Hey, what do you say you and I go out front here and smoke a cigarette before the police get here and cause all kinds of trouble.”
I don’t know what made me say it—except that it seemed a really appealing idea to me then; after all, it would get me out of harm’s way. If the kid refused to go, that’s what I was going to do: get out of there and smoke a cigarette. But it worked. The kid looked down at me, at the pack of cigarettes I’d produced, and said, “Okay,” real softly, and both of us strode out to the front of the building and lit up. He stood there, smoking his cigarette, getting his dignity back, and I chatted with him about how fine a cigarette is after any kind of exertion or trouble.
Annie told me later that Mr. Creighton came back to the table where we had been sitting, singing my praises. “Never saw anything like that in my life,” he said. “Your husband just stepped up to this big bully, whispered something to him, and just like that the guy turned around and walked out with him. It was a fair miracle.” She didn’t bother to tell him that I wasn’t her husband. (And when she told me that, I was unreasonably glad. Something about her willingness to have people think we were married made me proud.)
Doreen said to me the next day, “And you said you’re no good in a crisis.”
“I’m not,” I said. “That wasn’t a crisis.”
“Yes it was.”
“No, it was about to become one. When either one of those guys throws the first punch, you got the crisis. And that’s when you’d find it really hard to find my ass.”
She laughed, but I don’t think I convinced her.
26
Visits with Bible
The remainder of that first year and most of the summer that followed was completely taken up with Professor Bible. His condition worsened for a time—I thought he’d have to spend the rest of his life in the hospital—but eventually he came out and went home, and that’s when I started my regular visits. It was not too difficult to stop by and see him because, as it turned out, his apartment complex was only a few blocks up the street from the school. I could stop by after classes on the way home. The building he lived in was an old, red brick, square, flat-roofed structure just off the highway that ran in front of the school. It looked like a sort of guardhouse compared to the more modern buildings that crowded the slopes behind it.
I continued to learn from him. I was his only student, and he couldn’t stand not teaching, so eventually, I ended up reading the books and articles he suggested, and bringing him books to discuss that he thought I might learn from. (I would never have read Alexis de Tocqueville or Adam Smith or John Kenneth Galbraith if not for Professor Bible.) I also brought him cigarettes occasionally and we’d sit in his den smoking and sipping brandy while he soaked his foot. He did not lose his toe; only a small portion of it, and what was left slowly began to heal. Our conversations ran on and on sometimes, and most of it cannot be recaptured—even if I wanted to. It was like any class: a haze of lectures, conversations, and debates over a period of time that slips away so quickly you can’t believe it is comprised of anything so long as a semester. The truth is I really was in a sort of class, Bible’s class, all by myself until the end of my first teaching year, and nearly all of that summer.
Bible was in love with America. The idea of it moved him. “It’s the most exquisite idea human beings ever dreamed up,” he said to me once. “Liberty. A government founded on the notion that you—you, yourself—have an unalienable right to be happy; to seek your own happiness. Think of it.”
“It’s amazing,” I said.
“Is it any wonder that every single country on earth is represented here?”
“Represented?”
“America has attracted people from every culture, every country on earth.”
“Maybe some were captured and forced to come.”
“Did you know that American English contains more words than any other single language? You know why? Because every language on earth is represented in English. Every culture on earth has sent its poor and its disadvantaged and they have brought their language with them and given us words and words and words.”
I played devil’s advocate, just to get him excited; to get him talking about anything but the future. “Wasn’t all that immigration just cheap labor?” I asked. “All those slaves in the beginning, and then the poor immigrants who came later, they went into the factories and worked on the railroads and died in sweat and squalor so the earlier English, German, and Dutch settlers could prosper, right?”
“You are way too cynical for a man so young,” he said. He was smiling, and I had the impertinence to think he rather enjoyed my gentle resistance to his idealistic notions. Still, he really believed everything he said to me, and the sad truth is frequently I didn’t believe much of anything that I said to him. A lot of the time I just took the opposite tack because it challenged him, got him going, and also—to tell the truth—it made him more eloquent and interesting to listen to.
Here’s the only detail that I remember vividly—besides the foot and the bath,
the details of which I have already failed to spare you. Anyway, I don’t know if this is important or not but as you will see there’s a good reason that it sticks in my memory. This happened near the end of the school year. I was overcome with papers to grade and with the new lesson plans I was creating to show to Mrs. Creighton. I was in a hurry, so when I got to Bible’s place all I wanted to do was give him a few cigarettes, chat for a bit about the weather, and then be on my way. We had been talking about de Tocqueville at our last visit, his essay on America, and Bible brought it up again. In fact, he held the book in his lap. I don’t remember what he said; something about “the dream,” and then suddenly he got misty-eyed and turned away from me.
I sat in a hard chair across from him. He was in a large cushiony recliner, and in front of him was a round blue basin full of salt water in which he bathed his foot. One pant leg was rolled up to his knee. I looked up when I noticed that he had fallen silent, and then I saw the light reflected off the tears welling in his eyes.
“You okay?” I said.
He nodded, but I could see he wasn’t. It’s possible he wanted me to ask him again if he was okay.
Then he said, “This was such a great idea.”
“What?” I thought he might have been referring to the idea that I visit him once or twice a week, but I wasn’t sure.
He pointed to the book. “America. The whole notion that peasants and rubes could govern themselves.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” I said. “Our President is a former actor …”
He picked up the book, flipped through the pages with his gray fingers, and when he came to a place he had marked by folding the top edge down, he said, “Listen to this.” He cleared his throat, got better control of his emotions. “This was written in the 1830s. De Tocqueville’s talking about his realization that in fact—though he doubted it at first—democracy in America works. He says ‘the middle class can govern a state.’ Then he says, ‘Despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough.’ ”
In the Fall They Come Back Page 19