by Judy Troy
Mike walked past the black, reflective glass of Mac’s Retro-Rock-It Diner, where he hadn’t eaten yet, though Raymond had asked him to several times. “They have good milk shakes,” he’d told Mike. Mike pictured Raymond alone at a table, working on his space drawings, hardly looking up when the waitress came by.
Mike walked farther west, toward the railroad tracks and the airport. Away from the lights of Brookings, the moon was more distinct, but the clouds were increasing, and by the time Mike turned back toward the university there was no moon.
Most of the houses he’d walked past before were dark now; they weren’t so inviting anymore. They could have been the houses in Mike’s neighborhood in Wheatley—inhabited by people who were more screwed up than you wanted to know. Or else just boring.
A car drove by under the speed limit. Mike hardly noticed until it came around a second time. It was an Oldsmobile or a Buick, he thought, either brown or gray, and driven by a man, not a student. Mike kept walking, watching it inch toward the corner, then turn left and speed up slightly.
Don’t be paranoid, he told himself. Someone was probably lost, or else maybe the driver thought Mike was somebody else. There were a lot of possibilities, except that none of them seemed likely. What seemed likely was that it was either the police or somebody connected to his father.
And the next moment Mike felt as lost and overcome with fear as he had that night standing next to Elk Creek. He stood rigidly, trying to remember that the sidewalk under him was solid, as was the earth, and that if he were dying, the earth would not be dying with him; it would stay whole and in place no matter what his heart did.
The fear faded by degrees, but this time more of it was left behind, and what went underground only went to some purgatorylike place. So that while he felt less afraid, he also knew that he wasn’t the same anymore. He probably hadn’t been for a while.
Hansen Hall was in front of him now, and he stood back from the lighted street, under an oak tree, waiting to see if the car came around a third time. He was across the street from the girls’ side of the building; there were ten or twelve lighted windows with open curtains. He saw one girl in a nightgown, brushing her hair, another wearing only a sweatshirt and panties. If somebody was watching him, he thought, then they were watching him watch that.
He waited only a few seconds longer. Then he crossed the street, went inside and up the stairs.
• • •
EARLY Monday morning, by accident, and without wanting to, he ate breakfast with Heather Coates. He was sitting alone at Medary Commons; she came through the cafeteria line, saw him, then came over. “I don’t know if I should sit with you or not,” she said. “You didn’t call Morgan back.”
“I meant to.”
She took her juice and plate off her tray and sat down, smoothing back her dark hair. “I guess I’ll talk to you. But not about that.”
“About what then?” Mike said guardedly.
“I don’t know. Anything. I don’t have anything specific in mind.”
“Good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Mike said. “Just good.” He watched her butter her toast. His own plate of food was in front of him, most of which he hadn’t eaten.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she said.
“Not really.”
Heather ate all of her scrambled eggs before putting down her fork. “Just tell me why you didn’t call her back,” she said.
“I thought you weren’t going to talk about her.”
“I know. I can’t help it.”
“Well, it was late,” Mike said.
“What about all day yesterday, or last night?”
“So that makes me what?” Mike said. “An asshole?”
“I was thinking that you weren’t one.”
“So now I am.”
“What do you think?”
“I might sound like one,” Mike told her. “But that doesn’t mean I am one. Like maybe I just have a lot on my mind.”
“A lot of girls, you mean.”
“Not quite,” Mike said.
They sat in silence. Heather drank her juice.
“Did you read ‘Fern Hill’ yet?” she asked. It was a poem by Dylan Thomas, and was the next day’s assignment for their writing class.
“I had to memorize it in tenth grade.”
“You were lucky.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s like the best poem ever written.”
“Who told you that?” Mike said.
“Nobody. I just like it.”
“I’ll read it again tonight.”
“Before or after you call Morgan?” Heather said, and stood up to leave.
Fuck you, Mike said silently. He wasn’t sorry for Morgan, but he was sorry he’d screwed around with her. It made him feel desperate for sex. Or just really, really depressed. He sat in the cafeteria a while longer, through his first class, in fact.
TWENTY
THE nights and mornings grew chilly. The leaves weren’t changing yet, but in western South Dakota the temperature dropped into the thirties one night. Mike’s mother called one morning just to say that. She called him often, reminding him to get the oil changed in his truck, to eat three meals a day, to get involved in extracurricular activities. He hadn’t gone out for wrestling. Why would he have cared whether he won or lost a match?
“Aren’t there clubs you can join?” his mother said one night on the phone. He’d fallen asleep at his desk; the telephone had woken him up. “Why not ask Dr. Boyd about it?” The head of the honors program, an agronomy professor, was boyish-looking and slight. All Mike knew about him was that he’d been on the rodeo circuit when he was young. Mike’s mother seemed to believe that Boyd was the head/teacher/father/priest of the university—somebody Mike could go to for anything.
Mike’s mother only mentioned his father once; she told Mike that the divorce would be final soon. Mike had not told her about the car following him. It had not happened again, as far as he knew, and he had been paying careful attention, both when he was walking and when he was driving. He’d told himself, finally, that there was no point in worrying. Mike didn’t know anything. His father had never called him. Tom DeWitt had been wrong.
A sentence or two later, his mother told him that she’d been on a date. “I wasn’t sure I should mention it,” she said. “But I want you to know. I want to be honest with you. And I thought it might make you feel better, knowing that I had some company.”
“Okay,” Mike said. He didn’t bother asking who it was. It was one more way Tom DeWitt was staying in their lives.
“All right, then,” his mother said brightly. “So. How are your grades? What subject are you best in?”
“Physical education,” Mike said.
His mother laughed. “I’ve missed your jokes,” she told him.
Me, too, he thought.
When he got off the phone he became aware of voices next door—Terry’s, John’s, and Raymond’s. They were talking seriously, it sounded like, and Mike thought he heard his name mentioned. He sat as still as he could, listening. But he didn’t hear it again, and soon they began talking more casually.
THE following day, after Mike’s classes were over and he was back at his dorm, checking his mail, a girl standing next to him said, “It’s not here yet. It’s late today.” But there was an unstamped envelope in his mailbox. Morgan, he told himself, but it wasn’t from Morgan, and his head started hurting the second he saw the name. He went out to the parking lot so that he could read the letter alone, in his truck. It was handwritten on plain white paper.
“We think that your father was on a bus in Illinois,” Tom had written, “traveling north. He might be working his way up to you. If he is, and if he contacts you, you’re going to have to make a decision. Think about it beforehand. He might not be that far away.”
Enclosed, in case Mike had lost or thrown out the one he had, was a card with three phone numbers on it
. At the bottom of the card Tom had written, “Don’t forget what your father did,” and, “Don’t put yourself in the middle.”
Two girls were getting into the car next to Mike’s. The one who sat in the passenger seat smiled at him. He looked at her blankly, not recognizing her from one of his classes. He realized who she was as the car was backing out, and found himself raising his hand to wave at the empty space between his truck and a Pontiac.
• • •
HE read the letter several times, locked it in his glove compartment, and started driving slowly and nervously through campus and then through town, looking for Tom DeWitt’s car.
It was a cool afternoon. Students were playing Frisbee under the elms near the bell tower, and a group of girls was jogging through campus. Mike drove through every university parking lot and in and out of the parking lots of every motel and restaurant in Brookings. He saw two state police cars near the stadium, on North Campus Drive—he never had seen any on campus before.
For all Mike knew, his father was already in Brookings, and Mike was being used as bait. Or else maybe DeWitt was testing him somehow, trying to figure out, in advance, what Mike would do. All Mike was sure of was that none of this was about him. Mike, as an individual, didn’t matter to Tom DeWitt—not that Mike needed to, or expected to. But it was important for him to remember, because the thing that could fool you, Mike thought—or make a fool of you—was believing that people were thinking about you when they weren’t, caring about you when they didn’t.
He drove through campus a second time, and through Brookings again, ending up near the Best Western and the Wal-Mart as the streetlights were coming on. The line along the horizon was blue gray, the color of storm clouds over the Black Hills. But there were no hills in Brookings. There was no place from where he could have seen far enough.
He drove back toward campus, the northern edge of which was barren-looking and unkempt. There was grass growing up through the tennis courts. There was the shiplike sports complex looking alien among the other buildings. There was no car he recognized, nobody following him or waiting for him at his dorm—just a note from Raymond, which said: “Went to dinner. Waited for you then gave up.” He’d left the same note three times before.
LATER in the evening, while Raymond studied diligently and Mike lay in bed, doing nothing, Donetta called. “I’m failing precalculus,” she said. “I don’t ever want to hear the word exponential again. And what the hell is an imaginary number?
“Never mind,” she said, when he started to answer. “I don’t want to waste a phone call on it.”
“Me either,” Mike said. “Anyway, I can’t remember what it means.”
“Why not? What do you mean?”
Mike looked at Raymond, who looked back at Mike, picked up his book, and left the room. As soon as he was gone Mike turned off the light and stretched the telephone cord so that he could keep watch out the window for Tom DeWitt’s car—for any suspicious-looking car. “I’m not doing too well in calculus,” he told Donetta. “It’s like I’m senile. Or stupid.”
“Your mother says that you’ve been hard to talk to.”
“Why are you talking to my mother about me?”
“I’m not,” Donetta said. “But how can I help seeing her at school?”
“You could walk the other way.” She was quiet, and Mike could hear Cory and Mrs. Rush arguing in the background.
“They’ve been doing that since breakfast,” Donetta said. “I don’t even know what about. I just stay in my room. I’ve been working part-time at Andell’s to earn enough money to visit.”
“No wonder you want to come here.”
“No,” she said. “I want to see you.”
Mike was silent.
“I don’t even know if you’ve kept your promise,” Donetta said.
“About what?”
“About loving somebody else. And not making me figure it out.”
“I don’t love anybody else,” Mike told her.
“What’s wrong, then?”
“Who says anything is wrong?”
“You did,” Donetta said. “About calculus.”
“Well, that’s just school,” Mike said.
“It seems like more than that.”
“Nothing that’s wrong is about you,” Mike told her. “Or about you and me. Some things I have to handle on my own.” Donetta was quietly listening. In the background he heard a door slam.
“Will you call me when you feel bad?” she asked him.
“I don’t feel bad.”
“But if you do,” she said, “tell yourself what I do. That it’s not a fact. It’s just a feeling.”
Mike watched a dark car go past the dorm and turn down Seventh Avenue.
“Mike?” Donetta said.
“Okay,” he told her.
“But are you really listening to what I’m saying?”
“Yes. I heard you.” Outside, the car kept going.
“It can really help,” Donetta said. “Even though it might sound silly now.”
“Listen,” Mike told her. “I have to go. I have a lot of work to do. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
Afterward, Mike made up his mind not to call her for a while, not to call anyone, or check his phone messages. Because it was too stressful to talk to people. They didn’t understand how he felt. He was different now. The person they were talking to was not the person they had known in the summer. Maybe he hadn’t been that person ever.
The door opened. It was Raymond, making sure that Mike was off the phone. “I understand about privacy,” he told Mike. “Just tell me when you need it.”
Mike nodded. He sat at his desk, which was piled up with books and assignments, all the work he didn’t have the energy to do. He glanced out the window every few minutes. Then he searched through his desk for the five self-addressed envelopes Lee-Ann had given him. He thought that she might be the only person who could understand what he was going through.
“Dear Lee-Ann,” he wrote. “I just wanted to say hello. I was wondering what was going on there and what Neil and Ed were up to. And you. Because I really haven’t made any friends here.”
He crossed out that last sentence. But there was nothing he could think of to replace it with.
TWENTY-ONE
OVER the next few weeks Mike got D’s on two tests and F’s on three quizzes. He was too tired, for one thing, and got winded climbing one flight of stairs, let alone the four to his room. And he’d begun waking at four-thirty in the morning and not falling back asleep. He’d hear the first birds sing and lie with his eyes closed as the darkness turned to light. His dreams stayed vividly in his mind. A few days earlier, after receiving a letter from the Schofields—with Janna’s scribbling at the bottom of the page—he dreamed that the rabbits born under their porch had been born dead. In a more recent dream he was a child, and his father was teaching him how to swim in the deep end of a pool. “See how long you can hold your breath,” his father told him.
He’d stopped answering the phone or checking his messages, though he still read his letters. Donetta wrote him almost every day, and his mother wrote often as well. In his mother’s most recent letter she asked him to make sure his answering machine was working. She also told him that she’d been on two more dates, and he read that part of her letter closely.
“I had a good time,” she wrote. “What I mean is that it’s somebody I’d like to keep on seeing. And I’d like you to meet him, Mike. It doesn’t have to be anytime soon. I don’t mean that. But Jim has heard a lot about you.”
It was the student she was tutoring, and not Tom DeWitt. Instead of relief Mike felt that he’d fallen backward again, that he was falling behind at the same speed that his life, and the lives of the people around him, were moving forward.
ON the third Thursday of October, a mild morning, the sun shining down on the autumn trees, Mike was late—again—for his Honors Writing Seminar. He took a seat in the back of the room; Professor Jakes
looked up but said nothing. They were discussing Spiritual Autobiography, by Simone Weil. Mike had read it twice, trying to understand it, and unlike his other homework, it remained in his head.
“Why did she think so much about God?” one person asked.
“Because she thought so much about dying,” Heather Coates said.
“ ‘If only I knew how to disappear,’ ” Professor Jakes read, “ ‘there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear.… I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.’ That’s from a journal she kept,” he told the class. “What do you think she’s saying?”
“That she hated herself,” somebody said. “That she thought the world would be a better place if she died.”
“Except that she believed in love,” said Carla Beeker.
“If she lived now,” a boy asked, “wouldn’t we think she was crazy?”
“Don’t you ever think about who you are?” Carla said. “Or about God? Or about the kind of life you should lead?”
“No more than I have to.”
People laughed. Mike looked at the phrases he’d underlined in his book: I always believed that the instant of death is the center and object of life. If I am sad, it comes primarily from the permanent sadness that destiny has imprinted on my emotions …; Ideas come and settle in my mind by mistake, then realizing their mistake, they absolutely insist on coming out.…
“What do you think, Mr. Newlin?” Professor Jakes asked.
Mike looked up. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “There’s something personal about the way she says things. You feel like you know her when you read this.”
“Because she feels things so strongly,” Carla said. “Like how she read that one poem over and over.”