The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “We do. We would have, normally,” Davis said. “I think, actually, that lecture was for you. Again, I’m a bit preoccupied with gaining tenure, given my somewhat eccentric focus. But I mean, regardless, you saw how the kids loved it. Some of the upperclassmen even have a crypto club that meets on Thursdays in the cafeteria.”

  Lindstrom clasped his hands and appeared to be rolling and squeezing the juice out of a small fruit. “Some of the students do love it. I was reading your evaluations from past years. You’re really recruiting for your specialty. But not a small number felt you weren’t covering the syllabus well enough, going off book.”

  “If you could only correlate those negative reviews with the students’ grades, I’m sure you’d see a pattern.” Davis squinted in distress, revealing his upper incisors.

  “Students know a strong teacher even when they aren’t strong students. And part of the issue is probably that you are still lecturing. That’s a proven failure in education. If students wanted only lectures, I could videotape classes and fire all of the teachers, just show everything online. No, we’ve moved on now to peer instruction, where the teacher poses questions that the students discuss in pairs or small groups. It’s teacher-as-facilitator. I thought everyone was on board with that here.”

  “Yes, absolutely, and it’s what I normally do. It’s peers all the way in my classrooms. Look, come again to the class. I wasn’t myself that day. Let’s do this again, shall we? And it can be a complete surprise.” Davis stood and took his jacket from the high-backed chair and struggled to poke his arms back into it. “Any class. Any time.”

  # # #

  When he returned home from work that evening, Davis found Megan and another girl eating chips and swiping oily fingers against the other girl’s tablet computer at the kitchen table until Megan quickly shut it off. Squares of darker yellow wall paint revealed where all of the rules posters had once hung. He felt disoriented without them.

  “And who’s this?” he asked.

  “Tara.”

  “Hi, Mr. Beardsley.” She looked normal enough, and she made eye contact, was more confident-seeming than Megan’s past recruits.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “What’re you two up to today?” Megan had had a few friends in the past, but she’d always either stolen something of theirs or injured them, or she herself had cut off all ties at some imagined slight.

  “I’m going to show her your creatures.”

  “Perfect. What did you think of the one-armed Bigfoot?”

  “Awesome!” the girl said, pulling her legs under her in the kitchen chair.

  He plugged his cell phone into the kitchen charger and took a root beer into the living room, where he pulled his laptop out of the briefcase. He had just logged into the website of the local paper when great gasps and snortings came from the girls, with Megan loudly announcing, “I’m gonna get one that says, ‘Available for parties.’” They laughed into their fists like buzzing horns.

  “Two shows a night,” Tara added.

  “Oh, that’s so perfect!” Their chairs were squealing against the floor.

  “One girl I saw had Wrong side up, like, right here, across her back.”

  “Wait, at school?”

  “Some website.”

  “If it was Dana’s back, it would say, ‘Best side up.’”

  “Ah!” Someone fell to the floor.

  “Hey, girls?” Davis called. “Why don’t you play a game?”

  Silence.

  “There are all kinds of games in the hall closet.”

  “Jackpot,” he heard Megan say to her friend after a time.

  “Let’s send your guy a picture,” he heard Tara whisper, “some crazy picture.”

  Then came an unintelligible response, and they scrambled up the stairs to her room.

  Davis moved to the bottom stair and struggled with what to do. This bedlam was what peer instruction led to.

  Jenny came in from the deck, lugging a flower box of dead plants. “Could you clear the counter? Did you meet Tara?”

  He nodded.

  “She asked me to take the charts down for the afternoon. I said it was—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Were you going upstairs?”

  “I don’t—they’re up there—no, I’m not.”

  “How long you think this one’ll last?” she asked, pulling off her gloves.

  “Yes, that’s what I was wondering. We want to encourage it. She hasn’t had a friend since Lisa. Long time.” He returned to the living room.

  “Dinner will be a little late!” she called out.

  Davis was immediately drawn to a photo of a dead animal on the newspaper’s main page, some mystery creature that had been run over by a car.

  Legendary Beast Hit by Car

  GLENWOOD, Maine—Could an animal found dead on the roadside Wednesday morning be the monster of local legend?

  Mary Bartlett found the beast lying near the power lines on Howland Rd., having apparently been killed by a car. “It weighed about 50 pounds,” Bartlett figured. “It was black and had fangs curling over its lips, like something Stephen King would come up with,” she said. Bartlett was struck by the appearance of the carcass. “So evil-looking,” she said. “And stunk to high heaven.” Before being taken away by the highway department, the animal’s remains were photographed and examined by several local people, none of whom could readily identify its species.

  Todd Gardner of Howe Hill Rd. recognized the animal as the same one he had spotted in his yard the previous week. “It’s a mutant hybrid something or another, like half-dog half-rodent,” he said. “The back sloped way down like a German shepherd. I locked eyes with it for a time and then it plumb took off. I’ve never seen the likes of it in all my life.”

  For over ten years, Wexford County residents have reported sightings of a stalking animal with glowing eyes and also monstrous cries in the night. The deaths of a hound dog, a rat terrier, a schnoodle, and countless cats have been blamed on such an animal just over the past few years.

  “No one has a clue what it is,” Glenwood town manager Sue Noyes, said. “I’ve heard fisher, coydog, and even a dingo! I hope this one that’s been killed is the one done all the damage.”

  Eric Lindstrom, chair of the biology department at Greenstown College, said that based on his review of the photos, the animal was likely a rare wolf-dog hybrid.

  Oh, please! Davis writhed. This was no wolf-dog. God! Look at the photo, why don’t you! And why had the writer consulted Lindstrom anyway? That was a bad, bad call. Davis pulled away from the laptop to gain focus. The head was hyena-like in shape. Just so clearly. That and the sloped back and the Mickey Mouse ears all added up to a hyena, not a wolf or dog. He held up his phone and asked Siri to the call the paper, then left a six-minute message for the reporter of the story that ended with “and I’ll await your call.”

  He was reviewing his recorded comments in his head when he heard a thud and a burst of giggles from upstairs. He realized he wasn’t at all glad she’d made a friend. No, it actually strengthened his sense of dread.

  TIM

  Tim’s regular doctor had said he wouldn’t prescribe it, that Tim wasn’t a candidate, that his testosterone reading was normal for his age, but the doctor from the TV ad, Dr. Frank Harmon, said Tim was in desperate need of TRT. It was the tiredness, all the fat around the waist, low sex drive, soft testicles—or so they’d seemed to Harmon. Soft and small. Depression, too, but that was inevitable given the other symptoms, Harmon said.

  In the bathroom mirror, Tim’s torso had a long way to go to resemble Dr. Harmon’s, and he hated that he was thinking about Harmon’s torso at all, because it had given him the creeps—the hairless, ripped stomach, pecs like omelet pans on an old man. Harmon had taken his shirt off to show Tim how to apply the gel, but the doctor could have demonstrated just as easily with his shirt on.

  Tim followed Harmon’s method of squeezing half the gel packet onto each forearm, th
en rubbing his forearms together and against his flanks, where the skin was allegedly thinner. “Don’t waste any of that man gel!” Harmon had barked, so Tim rubbed himself like a mad cricket to get it all worked in.

  He needed only body rejuvenation. In his mind he was already a young man, with Blondie serving as mental testosterone. For five days, TallBlondBabe18 had been buzzing in and out of Tim’s life, asking after him, making some frank and thrilling suggestions. Reading her texts elevated every moment. If he was eating an apple when she made contact, it was the best apple in the world. “Eating an amazing apple,” he’d answer her. He’d told her all about his four-man fire team, the jobs they performed when they were in the Humvee. He was stuck in the turret, the only man exposed to fire, he told her. He was the protector. If a fifth man rode with them, he was called a GIB, Guy in Back. Sometimes he imagined her there, he’d said.

  She told him about her longing to leave home. It was rough there, she wrote. Her father was controlling. She wondered what part of Rusty she would be looking up at from the back seat.

  After slathering on the testosterone gel, Tim rifled through his dresser drawers, yelling, “Mona! Where are my sweats?”

  She came to the door. “I put ’em in the rag bag.”

  “Have they been cut up?”

  “Maybe. It’s a rag bag.”

  He marched down to the kitchen and snatched the bag from the pantry, where he found them, unscissored.

  “What are you going to do?” Mona asked as he tossed the sweats onto the bed.

  “Run.”

  “To the store?”

  “No. On the sidewalk. Like a runner.”

  In midmotion, as she was closing a drawer, she froze. “Take your phone.”

  “I’m taking my phone.”

  “Call if you feel arm pains, nine-one-one, any pains, as soon as you feel them.”

  He returned to the closet to look for shoes. Tomorrow he would buy runner’s shoes. He found an old pair of canvas boat shoes that would do for now.

  He jerked his sweats up his legs, slipped into the shoes, and descended the stairs, hands on hips, and with less vigor than he’d had going up.

  The backs of Tim’s thighs trembled as he waved his fingers down around midcalf, straining to touch the cement of his stoop and thinking about a route. Suddenly he heaved off into the fog, walking briskly, his arms swinging out at forty-five degrees, like ropes on a maypole. After three blocks, he thought he should start with the jogging. He had the same thought again after four blocks, and he actually began. His stomach lifted after each push off and slammed upon landing until he grabbed ahold of it. He held it from the sides, like it was something he was planning to hand off. Was he getting enough leg extension? Was he moving forward or just running in place? Then he slid a hand up to pin down his fleshy chest. He needed a video of himself, he decided. He needed a bit of a coach. A block was good for the first stretch of jogging and then a fast walk for a few more blocks and a cool-down on the way home. Of course, new shoes would make a huge difference in his form. No need to video without the new shoes. His phone dinged in his pocket. A text.

  Dear Ones,

  Among all of my crippling ailments, one is purely psychosocial: I care far too much abt others’ opinions! But here you lovly souls recognze my pain and wish to help (HOW CN THAT BE?). Seems impossible after spendng sooo many years in house of pain, walled off and imagining no one wd believe me.

  LET’S DO THIS DEAL! Now, you mst realize that your dear man has likely not pd any taxes or fees on that parking spot in ages, as he hadn’t for 105. My attentions wer too limitd to turn towards money dealings. How can IRA disappear without my signing anythng at all? IT MUST BE PART OF THE AGREEMENT THAT HE PAYS ALL TAXES AND FEES!

  I believe your silent witnessing on that late summer night emboldened him, catalyzed worst of the torture.

  Yours,

  Phyllis

  Tim tried to block out the images of Andy Paik beating his small, frail wife. So hard to believe that one of the few seemingly happy men Tim knew was a horrible brute. Then again, though, she could be psychotic. Maybe Andy was just trying to get her to leave the car and come inside that night but she was having a psychotic breakdown in the back seat. Still, visions of him pounding on her returned and returned, and Tim just couldn’t shake them.

  # # #

  That night in bed, his pillows propped behind him, Tim held his cell phone to one ear and used his other hand to dangle the last chicken wing before Mona’s eyes until she raised her book as a barrier.

  “The unpaid taxes on the driveway plus the fines for not paying them add up to five forty-five,” he told Andy before sucking the meat off the wing.

  “You know, I just had so much going on, I let that slip,” Andy said. “I can pay it, no problem. Do you think they let you pay by phone?”

  “Prolly.” Tim slurped. “I’m writing up the purchase-and-sale and I’ll email it to you. I have to write in that you’ll pay the taxes and fees. Phyllis wants it in the agreement. Could you sign and email it right back to me?”

  “I’m sorry you’re having to be the go-between, Tim. But I’m happy to do what I can to move this along.”

  “Hey, you know, she did you a favor by upping the price!” Tim topped off the mound of carnage on his snack plate with the final bone.

  “Oh, sure. I guess. I don’t know if it’s worth that amount, but it’s up to you. Can I fax the form back to you?”

  Tim gave him his work fax number.

  “I hope you’re having a lovely fall in Malden,” Andy said.

  “You, too.” Tim punched the red button and put the plate on the floor. “You know”—he wrenched himself over to Mona—“I think Phyllis is whacked. Andy is so amenable, so mild-mannered.”

  She held up a finger. “When they sign the form, I want you to show it to the brothers.”

  “Okay.” He heaved his body back over to lie on his other side. “What do you think? You think he beat her?”

  She lowered her book. “The first time I met her—I told you, right?—she had locked herself out, and I was teaching a lesson? She wanted to wait here for him to get home. So fine, but do you know she stood over us at the piano and sang along?”

  “Right, you mentioned that.”

  “Who does that?”

  He rolled back toward her. “There are things about her that make it hard to picture her as a victim. I mean, she seems pretty pushy in a way—singing along in the lesson, and now she raises the price of the space.”

  “It would be very surprising to me if he could hurt her.”

  “Well, the deal is done anyway, as long as she actually signs the thing.”

  “I want you to put a placard up saying cars will be towed.”

  “Cars will be towed,” he said. “Grenades will be launched.”

  “I’m with you, though, Tim. I think this is a fabulous investment. For one thing, eventually the bar might want an outdoor beer garden”—she rose up on her elbows—“only if we moved, of course. Or what if a developer wanted to put condos on the parking lot right next to it and they needed the extra square footage? You’ve heard of that kind of thing, right? Someone’s house is in the middle of where they want to put a big thing?”

  “Oh, sure,” he agreed. Somehow that little piece of tarmac had signaled a great change in fortune for her. He was glad of it, felt magnanimous.

  “Hey, you never told me. Who is your ideal self?” he asked.

  “That thing we wrote down?”

  “Yeah.”

  She lowered herself back down onto her pillow and laid the open book on her chest. “They’re doing The Barber of Seville next year. I will be Rosina.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “It’s funny, though, after you made me give all that up.” Over a span of fifteen years, until he was thirty-five, Tim had auditioned for nearly every major symphony in the US. Only once did he make it past the first round, but that one near-miss had sustained him. (It had
been quite a tough decision, they assured him.) Mona finally told him she couldn’t back him up in his quest any longer. They had a kid, needed more money, a house.

  Tim waited for her to answer him, but she didn’t say a word.

  # # #

  As he crossed the park by the football stadium toward the pull-up bars, Tim tugged on his old leather gloves and shouted back to Miles, “Feels good, doesn’t it? This afternoon we’ll get proper gear.”

  “Huh?” Miles honked.

  Under the shorter pull-up bar, Tim leaned against an upright. He punched his own palm. “We’re training for the Marine physical fitness test,” he told the still-plodding Miles. “It includes three exercises: dead-hang pull-ups, sit-ups, and a three-mile run.”

  Miles swung his long hair out of his face and looked back to see if anyone else was about.

  “The perfect score is three hundred: that’s twenty pull-ups for a hundred points, a hundred sit-ups in two minutes for another hundred points, and a three-mile run in eighteen minutes for a hundred. Anything under three hundred is not an ideal Marine.”

  Miles drooped like hanging from a hook. “I don’t think you can be a Marine. There’s an age limit.”

  “I’m challenging myself.”

  “I’m not doing it.”

  “What did I say? Am I asking you to do this? I need a drill instructor. We’re already here.”

  Miles looked toward the stadium again.

  “Drill instructors count the reps,” Tim told him. “That’s all you gotta do. Stand on that side of the bar.”

  The boy shuffled over.

  “Face me, Miles.”

  Miles looked pained.

  “The recruit comes to the position of attention in front of the bar.” Tim stood at attention. “Now you say, ‘Mount the bar and come to a complete dead hang.’”

  “Mount the bar?” Miles mugged.

  “‘Mount the bar and come to a complete dead hang.’ That’s all I need you to say.”

  “Mount the bar and come to a complete dead hang.” Miles had the slow, deep voice of a hypnotist.

  “Aye, sir!” Tim shouted and leapt for the bar, grasping it and settling like a bag of cannonballs. “Say, ‘Begin.’”