by Judy Troy
He opened Donetta’s letter first. He’d already received two from her, including the letter he’d seen sealed, in her car, before he left for school. The one he opened now said, “Guess what? The goat was alive, and she and Sophie are becoming friends. They sleep together in the cardboard box.”
Toward the end of the letter she wrote, “You know what I have on right now? A white T-shirt you can almost see through. I want to take it off for you and do things you’ve never done with anyone else and never will.” That excited him, then upset him a moment later. It implied that he’d been unfaithful in the past and predicted that he’d be unfaithful in the future. Why would she want to think of him that way?
Also in the envelope was a little watercolor she’d done: a painting of the cottonwood tree whose limbs bent down low over Lame Johnny Creek. In the bottom right-hand corner were her uncapitalized initials: dsr What was the s for? Mike knew but couldn’t remember. He went through every S name he could think of. He repeated “Donetta something Rush” to himself over and over again. Finally, giving up, just looking at red poppies planted along the gravel path, the name Senn came into his head—a family name on her mother’s side. Donetta Senn Rush. He felt relieved to remember it, as if he were afraid of losing his memory or even his mind.
His mother’s letter was short. She’d run into Lee-Ann Schofield, who’d said to tell Mike that Janna kept asking for him, and that the rabbits were healthy and growing.
His mother also wrote, “There’s no news on any front,” by which Mike knew that she meant his father. “Tom DeWitt stopped by, just to be friendly,” she wrote. “He wanted to know how you were doing at school.” She still didn’t seem to know about DeWitt’s idea that Glenn would try to contact Mike in Brookings, and her not knowing made it seem less possible. Mike had to remind himself that it could happen, that he needed to be on guard in case it did. Tom wouldn’t have given him those phone numbers if he didn’t think Glenn would show up. Or would he? Mike didn’t trust DeWitt to be honest or straightforward about anything.
His mother ended her letter with, “I try not to look at your empty room when I walk past it.” That had a strong effect on Mike. His room now seemed almost human. He imagined the room missing him as if it were a person. Mike had left his room behind, which made him feel as if he’d left himself behind.
Leaving McCrory Gardens, walking back across the hot campus, Mike threw his mother’s letter into a Dumpster behind the Union. He kept Donetta’s and, back in his room, tacked up her watercolor above his desk. He could hear Raymond next door, talking with their neighbors, Terry Linder and John Watts. The three of them had chemistry together. In a few minutes they’d probably come and ask Mike if he wanted to walk to Medary Commons for dinner. They were the only people Mike had met so far, except for a girl named Heather Coates, in his honors writing seminar, who also lived in Hansen Hall. She was tall and friendly and had spoken to him after class the day before. The class was subtitled: “Writing about Crises of Faith and Ethics,” and she had said, “I like Professor Jakes, but I’ve never had what you’d call a real crisis.”
“Me either,” Mike had lied, but a difference had established itself between them, separating him from her. His father’s crime had given him less in common with almost everybody. And he never had felt that he was much like other people to start with.
Outside now the sun was low. Mike couldn’t see it from his window, which faced south, but he could see the sky becoming paler, and the walls of his room changing from white to pale yellow.
He left before Raymond and the others could find him. He walked all the way to Larson Commons, near Sixteenth Avenue, where he was unlikely to know anyone. He got his tray of food and carried it to the far back corner. Three people at a nearby table looked up, then returned to their conversation. Most people were in groups or couples, but even the students sitting alone, like him, didn’t seem particularly lonely. Mike felt the solitary way he usually did; it was just more noticeable to him now. It was like clouds parting so that you could see the moon, when you already knew the moon was there.
HE’D forgotten there was a party that night at his dorm. When he walked into the lobby, after supper, there were at least fifty people there, a table with punch and pizza rolls, and Dwight Yoakum playing on a boom box. Heather Coates was standing next to the front desk with her roommate, Morgan Gault—the pretty girl who had smiled at Mike at Mad Jack’s. Heather waylaid Mike and introduced him to Morgan. Both girls were from Chamberlain.
“We’ve been best friends since the seventh grade,” Morgan said. She had on a short skirt and a blouse that tied under her breasts, leaving her stomach bare. “I’m not an honors student, though,” she told Mike. “Heather’s the smart one.”
“What one are you, then?” he asked.
She looked at Heather and they both laughed. “I’m the fun one,” Morgan said. “I’m the one who goes on a date the night before I have a test.”
John Watts came over to talk to Heather, and Morgan put her hand on Mike’s arm. “Will you sneak outside with me so that I can smoke?”
“Why do we have to sneak?”
“We don’t. I’m just used to it, from high school.”
He left with her through the back door; she led him across the lit-up parking lot to the dark field on the other side. It was a clear night, with stars beginning to appear. She walked into the middle of the field before sitting down.
“Do you want one?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.
“No,” he said. “Thanks.”
“So you don’t smoke.”
“Not usually.”
“What do you do usually?”
“Heroin.”
“Not really.”
“No,” Mike said. “Not really.”
It was deserted where they were—on the northern edge of campus, beyond which were only flat pastures owned by the university.
“I saw you at Mad Jack’s Sunday night,” Morgan said.
“I remember.”
“I have a boyfriend at school in Sioux Falls,” she told him. “But I’m not serious about him. I don’t expect to marry him or anything like that.” She put out her cigarette. She leaned back on her elbows, brushing her arm against Mike’s. “I’m free to date other people.”
“I don’t like that word, date,” Mike said. “It’s a fruit, for one thing.”
“How about ‘fuck around with’?” Morgan said. “Do you like that better?”
It was something Donetta would have said, but only to him, and only after they had been dating for a long time. It was sexy, but weird, coming from somebody he hardly knew. He turned toward her and they kissed. She pressed herself against him. Her breasts were larger than Donetta’s; she had wider shoulders and stronger arms, and as they kissed more deeply she reached down and put her hand on the crotch of his jeans.
“I want to jerk you off,” she said, which startled him even more. She undid his jeans and slipped her hand into his underwear, and it was clear that she was practiced at doing it. After just a few minutes he was ready to come but didn’t let himself. He reached up under her skirt and encountered thong-bikini panties—something he’d never seen on a girl except in magazines. He felt overstimulated and slightly crazy. When he couldn’t help but come, she acted as if she did, too. Mike couldn’t tell. Nothing about her seemed genuine.
He lay on the grass, breathing hard, looking up at the stars and moon. It was Lee-Ann who came into his mind, almost as if she were watching what he was doing. What would she say right now? he wondered. But he already knew. She’d say, “I don’t think that’s what you need.” She’d say, “You have to separate people you can trust from people you can’t.”
Morgan smiled at him. “Next time we’ll bring Kleenex,” she said. She stood up and brushed off her clothes, then brushed off Mike’s when he stood up.
“Get rid of the evidence, right?”
“There’s nothing wrong with what we did,” Morgan said coldly.
“All right,” she said. “It’s just that some guys are hypocritical about sex.”
He walked her back to the party. They didn’t talk, and once inside the lobby she moved away from him. He was both glad and hurt. He stood near Raymond, who was talking to a plain-looking girl named Carla Beeker. Mike recognized her from his writing seminar. She’d read aloud a journal entry about her brother, who had cystic fibrosis. She was, in fact, the only person in the class Mike could relate to, because she was thoughtful, and she didn’t smile unless there was a reason to. You could tell by looking at her that she had serious things on her mind.
She and Raymond were talking about the valedictory speeches they’d given at their respective high schools. Conversations like that, Mike knew, were the kinds of things people made fun of straight-A students for. It made them seem like nerdy overachievers. But the people who made fun of them were idiots with inferiority complexes. Mike’s problem was that he saw both groups critically. He could never be part of any group unself-consciously.
He went upstairs, turned on the light, and stood next to the phone. He hadn’t written to Donetta yet, and he called her now.
“Hey,” he said when she answered. “I thought you’d be on a date with some hotshot football player.”
“Why would I be on a date with anyone?” she said.
“You wouldn’t. I was just kidding.”
“Why?” Donetta asked.
Mike didn’t have an answer. He looked at his small room—the window too narrow to let in enough air, the beds suffocatingly close to the ceiling.
“Mike?” she said.
“Listen,” he told her. “I just wanted to say thanks for the letters. And for the drawing of the tree. I put it up over my desk.” He stopped, listening to her breathe. “I don’t know why I was joking like that,” he said then. “I don’t.”
Raymond came in holding a box of pizza rolls. “They had them left over,” he said, before seeing that Mike was on the phone.
“Your roommate?” Donetta asked.
“Yes.”
“And there’s no girl waiting for you?”
“Of course not.”
“It’s really hard,” she told him, “being far from you. I knew it would be. But it’s worse than I thought.”
“For me, too,” Mike said.
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
After getting off the phone he stood at the window, looking at the flatness of the streets and the scattered lights of campus. Raymond, behind him, was sitting in front of a blank computer screen. “Is there a definite way to know if a girl likes you?” he asked Mike.
“I don’t know about definite,” Mike said. “You have to go with what it feels like. You have to trust your instincts.”
Raymond laughed a little. “Then I’m really in trouble,” he said.
They both settled down to study. Mike got out his honors writing anthology and read his assignment, “The Allegory of the Cave,” by Plato, about how most people don’t see the world but see only shadows of the world, and about how we should ascend into the light of intelligence and truth and see things as they really are.
What would that mean, Mike thought—that how things seemed were never how they really were? And that you couldn’t believe that what you saw was what other people saw? And how could you stand to be objective anyway? For example, he knew what a creep he would look like to himself, right now, if he could see tonight objectively. Fortunately, he thought, there was no danger of that.
He gave up on reading and took refuge in daydreaming—imagining himself in the Badlands, high up, sitting still, waiting to see mountain goats. He’d never seen just one. They were always in pairs or groups of three. They had ways of communicating that were impossible for human beings to discover. They were mysterious to humans, and humans were mysterious to them. In that way Mike was safe from them. It was also a given that they were safe from him.
NINETEEN
MIKE’S life assumed a routine. He ate breakfast alone, unless he couldn’t avoid Raymond; he attended his classes; and he had most of his other meals at the far end of campus. On the few occasions he went to dinner with Raymond and their neighbors, Terry and John, he listened more than he talked, especially when the subject was where each of them was from, or what their families were like. If they asked Mike a question, he answered in as few words as possible. On a Saturday night two weeks into the semester, he did talk a little about his job at the Schofields’, as a way to describe his summer.
“That sounds great,” Raymond said. “I spent all summer taking care of my stepbrother.”
“I worked for my dad,” John said. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
“I’d end up killing my dad if I had to work for him,” Terry said. “Or he’d kill me.”
They all laughed about that, Mike forcing himself to smile.
On that night he left the cafeteria earlier than they did and went to the library with his books. In terms of school he wasn’t as on top of things as he might have been. “Learn your professors’ names,” Dr. Boyd had said. “Stay one class ahead with your reading and homework.” Mike found the second part difficult to do.
Right now, in the library, he took a seat next to an open window, from where he could hear people playing soccer, in the dusk, in Sexauer Field. It was a warm night. The library was mostly empty. Mike opened his calculus book but became interested instead in the gray patterned carpeting and vacant carrels, then in the sound of the voices outside. He got up to get a drink of water and use the rest room. After that he made himself solve one problem before closing his book and returning to Hansen Hall.
On the fourth floor, in the hallway, Raymond, John, and two other honors students were trying to play hockey with umbrellas and a bar of soap. Raymond called a time-out, following Mike into their room. “Morgan Gault called,” he told him. “She said for you to call her.”
“Thanks.”
“To call when you got back.”
“Okay,” Mike said. He put down his books, opened his closet, and stuffed dirty clothes into a pillowcase. Laundry was something else that he hadn’t stayed on top of.
Raymond was watching him. “She’s really good-looking,” he said.
“I guess so.”
“But not very smart?”
“Smart enough.”
“Her number’s on the pad by the phone,” Raymond told him.
Mike picked up his keys and opened the door.
“What should I tell her if she calls back?”
“Ask her out yourself,” Mike said. He’d meant it to be funny, but it came out sarcastic and mean. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Raymond. “Say you haven’t seen me.”
DOWNSTAIRS, Mike had the laundry room to himself. He had brought along his calculus and world-history textbooks, which had been a mistake, he realized. Both books together made him feel overwhelmed. He should have brought one or the other. What he read instead were two Sports Illustrated magazines somebody had left behind.
When a Chinese student came in to collect her clothes from a dryer, Mike talked to her a little. She was small and slender, and her shiny hair reached almost to her waist. She said she was from Beijing. “What’s it like to be so far from home?” he asked her.
“Not so bad. I get lots of letters from my family. And from my fiancé as well,” she added shyly.
“Do you talk to them on the phone?”
“Almost never,” she said. “It costs too much. You’re lucky to attend school in your own country.”
She finished folding her clothes and smiled at him. After she left he thought first about the letters from Donetta and his mother that he hadn’t answered, and then about the Chinese girl. He got an erection imagining how, if she were undressed, her long hair would look against her skin. He considered masturbating, taking the risk of somebody walking in. It at least would differentiate how he spent a Saturday night from how he s
pent a weekday night. When two girls walked in a few minutes later, he wondered how he’d turned into such a pervert.
LATER, he went downstairs and outside, where streaks of clouds were blowing past a white moon. He wanted to get away from Raymond and the other people on the fourth floor. He walked down Seventh Avenue, past the rental houses close to the university, then past houses that were larger and nicer: older, two-story homes with cared-for lawns and big trees.
He could see into lighted living rooms and kitchens, and he imagined himself older, out of school, living alone in one of those houses. He’d put up a wooden fence people couldn’t see through and get a dog; he wouldn’t talk to anyone he didn’t feel like talking to.
It was warm outside, not yet fall, not even at night. Donetta would like that, he thought. She hated the cold. For the previous Christmas, he’d bought her a down comforter with money he’d saved from the summer. She’d told him that on cold nights she’d get into bed early and look at the photo album her father had given her before he died—photographs he’d taken the year he was eighteen, hitchhiking cross-country by himself.
The pictures had titles like “Snowed-in in Greybull, Wyoming,” or “Brush Mountain near Altoona, Pennsylvania.”
“It’s like a diary,” Donetta had said. She’d started one of her own, with a photograph of herself and Mike, at the lake, which she called, “In Love, at Crow Lake, South Dakota.” Mike had had a copy of it once. He’d lost it, or thrown it out—he couldn’t remember anymore. Early senility, he thought. Lose your mind at college.
When Mike got to Sixth Street he walked west, downtown, where the post office and restaurants were, small stores, and a bar called Ray’s Corner, which had poker and blackjack machines. The streets were full of people. Mike didn’t feel a part of the university or the town.
At the end of the wide street was Sexauer Feeds, a granary so big that Mike could see it all the way from his dorm window. That’s where he could work, he thought, if he lived in one of those houses on Seventh Avenue. He could have a simple job, some repetitive thing he could do without thinking; then he could go home at night to his dog and his own peaceful house. He wouldn’t have to lead a complicated life. His life could be as simple and quiet as that sheepherder’s life in the book Josh had been reading. He could settle somewhere, draw a small circle around himself, as if with a compass, and live inside it.