Are You Nuts?

by Mark Richard Zubro

  Belutha said, “I saw Beatrix talking to one of those new teachers. A blond, young man, Trevor something. They seemed to be arguing. I couldn’t hear what it was about. I didn’t tell the police about that. Should I have? As far as I could tell, it had nothing to do with Jerome.”

  “It probably wasn’t important,” is what I said, but I wasn’t so sure about that.

  I’d have to talk to our Beatrix and our Trevor, if that’s who it was. The picture of Beatrix as a lying sack of shit appealed to me. Trevor as a total asshole worked for me as well. Of course, if he was arguing with Beatrix, he couldn’t be all bad.

  I asked, “What did you do?”

  “When I felt better, I got up. I was still a little weak. That outburst took a physical and emotional toll on me. I’m on several different medicines from my doctor.”

  “Did you see anything as you left?”

  “I didn’t even vote. I left by one of the side doors. I passed Meg on her way down the hall.”

  “When was this?”

  “I said, on my way out. I ignored her. She wasn’t on the way to the library. I saw Jerome after that. He was coming back from the wing with the math department offices. He was alive when I left.”

  Meg had taken a journey outside the room that I hadn’t known about. And what was Jerome doing down in the math offices? Simply stopping in his classroom, or picking up something in the office he forgot, or trysting with a murderer?

  “You didn’t see Jerome and Meg together?”

  “No, they were going in opposite directions.”

  It bothered me that Meg hadn’t added this to what she had told Agnes. Or had Agnes simply forgotten it or left it out deliberately? Or did Meg have something to cover up? I wanted to speak with her. Before the murder, we’d have been comparing notes and making cracks about all the people involved. Now, I’d be happy to comfort her and help her out. I needed a face-to-face meeting with her.

  Belutha continued, “I talked with Jerome for another second or two. He’d been to his mailbox and found a note from that Seth person. Jerome was really angry that Seth had put out such a thing.”

  “I don’t remember Jerome’s name being mentioned.”

  “It wasn’t. He was afraid it was going to make Seth successful. That people would believe and trust Seth and not Jerome. He wanted to write something against it or something more harsh. He wanted me to begin planning to have another meeting to write it up.”

  “He didn’t write his own propaganda?”

  “Oh my, no. We would get together to decide strategy. I shouldn’t tell you any more about that.”

  “You’ve been helpful.” I got up to leave. She showed me out with some graciousness. She added at the end, “I’m going to be on the phone about Lydia tonight. She can’t say those kinds of things.”

  Instead of turning on the air-conditioning in the truck, I left the windows open. A mild sheen of sweat formed on me as I hurried through the Midwestern humidity. I smelled rain on the wind. I hoped it would make it cooler.

  At home I found Scott curled in his favorite armchair. He was watching The Weather Channel on cable television. If he’s depressed, he can sit there for hours enthralled by the charts, graphs, and occasional inadvertent hilarity of live television.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “There’s cold pizza. You want me to microwave it for you? I made a salad or you could nuke some vegetables.”

  He ate a salad while I had a late dinner. “You okay?” I asked.

  I watched him carefully. He was wearing white gym socks and his oldest high school gym shorts. He’d sewn them and patched them numerous times. He wore his working-on-the-car T-shirt. It never came completely clean in the wash anymore. It had interesting patterns of old stains. It also clung tightly to the muscles on his upper arms and showed his flat stomach to great advantage.

  “I’m feeling a little better,” he said. “I spent most of the day canceling engagements. Biff is not happy with me.”

  His agent had some long, boring preppy name; Scott just referred to him as Biff.

  “Are you happy with you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. As I erased each thing from my calendar, I felt better. I’m keeping only those engagements where I agreed to do a charity appearance. Most of those are AIDS-related anyway.”

  A huge number of Scott’s promotional appearances in the past few months had been for helping other gay people, gay health groups, gay hospices. If it was gay and they needed help, they called Scott.

  He continued, “I cut back on some of those too. I want time to myself. I need to enjoy the first September I’ve had off since fourth grade.”

  “I’m worried about you. I’m also having a little cognitive dissonance. We’ve been fucking like bunnies since you’ve been back, but you’re upset about being gay?”

  “Is that cognitive dissonance stuff catching?” He felt my forehead. “You don’t have a fever and you don’t look cognitive or dissonant.”

  “I think you’re better.”

  “I’m still a little down, but I’m pulling it together. My comment came from a mixture of depression and being overtired and a wish that everything could be easier and simpler. I know who I am and I’m happy about it. I’m as normal as I want to be.”

  I mentioned Kurt’s comment about being an unhappy gay person. Scott laughed. “People are more used to dying and depressed gay people from all that shit on television. They’re going to be disappointed if they do a film on my life.”

  “Good.”

  He asked me about the investigation and I filled him in. I finished, “I’m worried about the union election.”

  “You get wrapped up in things. Whose side is winning and losing. I’ve seen you on election nights flipping between every network and cable television station. You are obsessed with this stuff. Are you sure that’s good?”

  “Isn’t it important who wins the union election in my school?”

  “Why would it be? How is it going to hurt you if Seth wins?”

  “You’re the man whose union is making huge headlines about its strike. It makes a difference if there’s a moronic fool running things. I think it’s important to prevent that. People invest a lot of emotion in what directly affects their lives. Look at the passion that was involved in the simple PTA election that started all of this. According to what I’ve learned, a lot of that began many years ago.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. The guys on the team get nuts about the union.”

  “Nobody stands out as a major suspect yet,” I said.

  “That Beorn guy, the part-time teacher, strikes me as dangerous. It’s always good to have a militia member hanging around the woodwork as a murder suspect.”

  “Beorn strikes me as mildly nuts, but he doesn’t rate too highly as a killer.”

  “Lydia?”

  “Lydia or Belutha work equally well for me, but I don’t see major motivation for murder there.”

  “How about Beatrix?”

  “If I could pin the murder on her, I would be delighted.”

  “Or Meg.”

  “Possible, but not probable.”

  “Maybe you need to look deeper into motivation.”

  “I need to look deeper into everything.”

  Snuggled together on the living room couch, we watched our tape of the movie Beautiful Thing, something that often helps cheer him up. At one in the morning, it began to rain lightly.

  When we got to bed, he pulled me close and rested his head on my chest. He rearranged my chest hair with his chin so it wouldn’t tickle his nose. I put my arms around him and he sighed contentedly. I stroked his back and his shoulders gently and easily. I was still worn-out from lack of sleep. I was not looking forward to being up in a few hours to go to school.

  I’d thought he’d fallen asleep when he murmured, “I love you, Tommy.”

  Most everybody just calls me Tom. My mother, when she was irritated with me when I was a kid, would call me Thomas—sti
ll does. I don’t usually like being called Tommy, but when Scott does it with the deep thrum in his voice with that latent Southern drawl behind it, I just melt. We don’t call each other pet names often, but that’s his for me in his most emotional and tender moments.

  I said, “I love you.”

  I felt his body relax and knew shortly after that he had truly fallen asleep. He seldom nods off all nestled around me, and I usually find it difficult to fall asleep that way as well, but I didn’t care that night. I held and caressed the man I love for a long time. It was quite a while before I dozed off.

  I woke around six. Scott was still asleep. I noted the tousled hair, the rise and fall of his chest, the occasional murmur or twitch. I still love watching him sleep.

  Finally, I got up and looked outside. A light rain switching to mist continued to fall.

  I decided to get in a morning workout. Tomorrow was Friday and we would have students all day. Today was a teachers’ institute at the new school. The people I wanted to talk to would all be present. I thought of calling Meg. I decided to wait and see if Georgette had talked to her. Maybe Georgette would have an insight I had missed.

  I’d been clanking with the weights for about fifteen minutes when Scott joined me. In silence he did his stretching exercises. We wore old sweat clothes shrunken from many washings to where they clung to various muscle groups on our bodies. We spotted each other as we lifted and groaned. About halfway through the workout his crotch brushed against my knee as I was doing a leg lift. I stopped and he moved closer. He brushed the sweat from his eyes. Sweaty sex with that man is just about the best.

  A few intense and fierce minutes passed.

  I was in the shower when he came into the bathroom. I thought he was going to shave. He pulled the door slightly open.

  “You were talking about a Belutha Muffin last night?”

  I stopped shampooing my hair. “Yeah. I talked with her at her house last night. She’s one of the pains in the asses of the opposition.”

  “Not anymore she’s not. She’s dead.”

  11

  He’d been listening to an all-news radio station. We couldn’t find a report on any other station or a repeat of what he’d heard. I called several friends including Kurt, but they had heard nothing. Everyone was in a rush to get to school for the first institute day. I hurried myself. At the door I kissed Scott and told him I loved him. He pulled me close and grasped my shoulder with one hand and my butt with the other. He squeezed them both.

  It poured rain for the entire forty-five minutes it took to drive to work. By the time I stepped onto the pavement in the parking lot, a fresh breeze was blowing and the sky to the north was clearing. Cool after the rain. It was heavenly.

  The parking lot of the Benjamin Harrison High School was crowded with the cars of teachers from all over the district. I saw emergency vehicles clustered around a distant door. They were parked on the newly sodded back lawn.

  Inside, the school glistened and gleamed. The tile shone. The walls were that massive cinder block so many schools are built of now. The yet-to-be-blemished walls were painted a pale yellow. The glass in the windows sparkled. The air-conditioning puffed merrily away.

  I spotted Kurt. He was surrounded by a group of teachers. I joined them. The number one topic of discussion was Belutha.

  Numerous voices shared theories and wild rumors.

  “I heard she committed suicide.”

  “No way. I heard she had her throat slit in one of the johns.”

  “I saw the emergency vehicles out back,” I said. “It happened here?”

  “Yes,” three people said.

  “Where have you been?” Kurt asked.

  “I just got here. Who has real information?”

  One of the group offered, “I heard she had a doughnut stuffed in her mouth.”

  “Is that significant?” I asked.

  “It’s what I heard.”

  “A custodian found the body this morning.”

  “She’d begun to decompose.”

  “The custodian or Belutha?” I asked.

  “Probably both,” Kurt said.

  “Well, that’s what I was told.”

  “She wouldn’t begin to decompose so soon,” another one commented.

  Kurt took me aside. “Beatrix is pissed at you.”

  “About what now?”

  “Just about everything, I believe. I’m supposed to holler at you and get you in trouble.” He laughed. “I gave her a big hug, and we’re best friends.”

  “Fat chance.”

  Carolyn Blackburn swept by with the president of the school board and the two detectives Baxter Dickinson and Leonard Rosewald. The school board president was talking rapidly.

  I knew who I had to find. Georgette. On the first institute day the secretaries usually had folders and name badges to pass out for all the teachers from their buildings. I found her with only three folders left. She gave me a distraught look.

  “You’ve heard?” she asked.

  “Yes. What can you tell me?”

  She glanced around. She motioned me into the nearest room. Maps of the world covered one wall, and copies of old front pages of newspapers from famous days in history were on another. Must have been a social studies room.

  Georgette was pale and trembling. “I can’t believe this. They can’t accuse Meg of this, can they?”

  “Did you talk to Meg?”

  “Last night—before all this. The poor dear is totally upset. We only talked for about thirty seconds. It was as if she couldn’t wait for me to get off the phone. I was just trying to be kind.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude. This is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.”

  “Oh, I understand. She’s been through hell. I hope they leave her alone. I want the old Meg back.”

  I wondered if that would ever be possible.

  “What happened to Belutha?”

  “I don’t know everything, but I know more than most.” Georgette obviously loved being the center of mystery and intrigue. “I had to be here early and I talked to Robert Tusher. I do not like that man. When I’m near him, all I can think of are venomous snakes.”

  “Did he find the body?”

  “No, one of those community service kids did. Tusher had to be here first to open the school. One or two other custodians and a couple of those working delinquents came in at the same time. I don’t like having those teenagers around. They’re criminals, you know.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with her.

  “Each was told to open different rooms. This place is so new, they wanted everybody to be able to tour. I think they had photographers scheduled to be here from the local papers—now there is going to be a mob of them. Mabel, the secretary here, said they had calls from every news organization in Chicago and the suburbs. They are going to be doing some of those remote broadcasts ‘live from the scene’ in front of the school. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.”

  “Which kid found her and where and what happened?”

  “Veronica Heskwith, a girl who is supposed to be a senior here, but has only enough credits to be a sophomore. She was sobbing in the office when I walked in.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  “She doesn’t have a reputation as a troublemaker. I heard she just failed classes here, but did her juvenile delinquent activities outside of school.”

  “What did she say about finding the body?”

  “Nothing at the time. The poor girl just sobbed and sobbed. Mabel told me that the body was in the new library. Belutha had her head bashed in.”

  “With a book?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anything else you’ve been able to find out?”

  “No. All these wild rumors are out of control. Don’t people have any sense?”

  “I guess sometimes not.”

  “This is a tragedy.”

  “Is school going to b
e canceled?”

  “I don’t think so. Carolyn is going to make a speech in a few minutes. She’s supposed to explain everything to the staff when she talks.” Georgette glanced at the clock. “She’s going to be starting in a few minutes in the auditorium. You should be there.”

  I hurried out. Teachers were scattered in knots around the doors and in the hallway outside the auditorium. I looked inside. The room could seat at least a thousand people. The slightly less than three hundred teachers were joined by every employee in the district, bringing the total crowd close to five hundred, counting custodians, bus drivers, secretaries, clerks, and teacher’s aides.

  The room buzzed with talk. No one was on the platform, and events didn’t seem to be anywhere near starting. I went in search of my liars Beatrix and Trevor.

  I found Beatrix talking to Seth.

  I said, “Beatrix, I need to speak to you.”

  She gave me a dirty look. “I’m going into the auditorium.”

  “You don’t have to talk to him,” Seth said. “He’s not going to be grievance chair or building rep after the election.”

  “Seth, angel, dear, sweetheart, sit on it and rotate.”

  His mouth gaped open at me.

  “Beatrix, you need to talk to me right now, or I will find the nearest police officer and begin talking to him or her about you.”

  “What about?”

  “Now, Beatrix. We need to chat. In front of a crowd or in private?”

  “I can come with you and be a witness,” Seth said. “You don’t want him sexually harassing you.”

  “He’s gay,” Beatrix snapped. “I can handle any man, much less him.”

  “Beatrix, let’s not try my patience this morning.”

  I looked back at the area around the auditorium doors. People were still milling about.

  We stepped into an undecorated classroom.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Belutha told me you were meeting with people after the big fight at the PTA meeting. You told me you left. Now if Belutha told the police, they would have questioned you about it. Why did you lie to me and why didn’t she tell the police?”