I should mention that I came back to Gruel completely-alone, that no woman will ever marry me. My first name's Ellis, so it comes out one of those names like Les Miles, Mike Hunt, all the rest. It's an old-fashioned South, and exactly zero women want to be called Mrs. Ellis Cary, wife of a desecrater. I'd have a worse chance in a land of Cockney women. At least that's what I've always told everyone.
It took my English department chairman four semesters to completely understand my great scam, a series of sophomore-level courses approved by a six-person curriculum committee, then approved by the stupid dean, a clutch of hands-on busybody trustees, and the president of the college. For all I know our state legislators and governor, too, thought it utterly fantastic and unselfish of me to teach five classes per semester while my colleagues took on only four.
"I don't know how you do it," Donna Mickel, a Faulkner scholar who got a master's degree from Clemson and doctorate from the University of Alabama, said to me more than once. She'd been at Anders College since its 1975 inception as a state institution. "Some of us kind of wish you'd slack up, Ellis. You're making us look bad." Donna Mickel liked to tell a story about how she almost had a paper accepted one time in College Writing, College Reading! It was a section of her dissertation entitled "William Faulkner, Closet Merchant Seaman: The Feminist and Oceanic Politics in the Collected Stories." Then Donna Mickel gave up altogether, and took up the clarinet.
What else could I ever say to her but, "These first-generation students need to know"? "Call me obsessed, but there are works of literature that I think will only make them stronger citizens, no matter what fields of expertise they choose later on in life."
My ex-department chairman once said—I swear to God—"One of the best classes I took in graduate school was the novels of O. Henry. I wouldn't mind teaching it myself if anyone else could take over my Hardy Boys and Postmodernism course." Dr. Blocker went to one of those Ph.D.-by-mail outfits. "I got to tell you, Ellis, we're happy and proud to have you on the faculty here. Keep up the good work."
The first-generation students got it, though: They knew that my made-up course in the nonexistent novels of Raymond Carver meant that they would have nothing to read, that they would have no major papers. They showed up faster than Eskimos at a handwarmer giveaway. What started out as my teaching only one Ray Carver's novels class and four sections of English 101 ended up being five identical courses, each jammed with thirty students. I handed out blank sheets of typing paper for my syllabus.
"Your students really love the Raymond Carver novels class," every one of my colleagues told me during the course of each semester. "I wouldn't mind sitting in on it myself"
I didn't fear that ever happening as much as I feared some pinhead real scholar finding a Raymond Carver novel locked up inside a Syracuse, Iowa City, and/or Port Angeles basement, of the treasure being reported in USA Today or on Entertainment Tonight—how the very first novel ever of Raymond Carver was found by a snooping grad student, and a bidding war continued between publishing houses up in New York. Then I'd have to admit how I met with my students during their Monday-Wednesday-Friday or Tuesday-Thursday sessions and we basically talked about real-life problems concerning love and hate, conformity and rebellion, innocence and experience—the regular themes in all of Carver's short stories. I'd have to admit that although I urged my students to read all of the writer's stories, I never tested them, or offered up themes, or graded a paper over a two-year period. Everyone made an A as long as they showed up for class. It had been my contention long before that grades didn't matter in the history of the universe.
"It has come to my attention that you haven't actually taught any of Raymond Carver's novels since developing the course," Dr. Blocker finally said. "Could you explain this to me?"
We sat in my office. I turned off my computer so he couldn't read the screen where I was writing up another set of fake courses on the novels of Ring Lardner. I looked out the window at two of my students trying to catch a Frisbee in their mouths. One of them, I knew, would grow up to be an administrator. I said, "What are you talking about?"
"I think you know what I'm talking about. I was going over our majors' exit questionnaires, and more than a few of them mentioned how they learned more about life in your class than any other, even though there was nothing to read."
I should mention that I already knew that my mother was dying, that her oncologist's prognosis was for her to be gone in three months tops, and that I would probably have to ask for a leave of absence in order to tend to her limited estate. So it wasn't like I was brave or anything when I said, "You fucking idiot—Raymond Carver wrote zero novels. If you people here knew anything whatsoever, you'd know that when I made up the course it was only a joke. I thought for sure somebody would say, 'Hey, that's funny, Ellis Cary—that would be like teaching a course called The Poetry of Ronald Reagan.'"
Dr. Blocker sat forward. "Well, as a matter of fact, I brought this up with Dr. Mickel and she said that it would be like teaching the poetry of William Faulkner."
I didn't say, "You bunch of fucking morons, Faulkner's first book was poetry." No, I said, "Listen. Let me tell you about my father." I went into everything, exactly as I would have to do soon thereafter with Judge Cowart, from Myrtle Beach motel sand in the carpet to the giant flypaper swatter catching microbes in the air. Then I said, "In some kind of genetic bad luck, I am highly allergic and fearful to chalk dust. Y'all are lucky that I haven't sued the college for workmen's comp, or for not establishing a safe workplace for the handicapped. Anyway, I made up the Carver course because I knew it would keep me from having to write on the chalkboard, thus saving my life."
Dr. Blocker leaned back in his chair. "I'm going to have to fire you for insubordination. There's an insubordination clause in your contract. I can only classify you as being insubordinate."
I said, "Nancy Drew wouldn't have had anything to do with the Hardy Boys, in case you're interested. Now she was postmodern."
I trashed everything in my computer, outside of a little song I'd written about the English department, and boxed up my books, and left town. My mother died within the week, but not before telling me that she wished to be cremated and scattered in places that I thought she'd be most beneficial.
My community service involved literally painting the town red: fire hydrants on the square, two brick alleyways, the base of Colonel Dill's statue across from Victor Dees's Army-Navy Surplus, a wooden house on Old Old Greenville Road where, supposedly, Jefferson Davis slept while his troops got massacred in a variety of fields to the northeast. Get this: My parole officer was a kid named Buck Hammond who underwent my first Novels of Raymond Carver class two years earlier. I met with young Buck and said, "I take it you're familiar with what went on in court."
He said, "No one's ever mentioned where your mother is now. Where's your mother now? I mean, if you didn't finish the deed of pouring her onto your father's grave site, then what happened to her?"
I taught him well, I thought. "She's still in the little snapshut plastic container that they gave me at Harley Funeral Home over in Forty-Five. She's on the mantel back home."
Buck said, "I know I didn't take any psychology courses over at Anders. I majored in sociology. But I learned enough in your Raymond Carver class to know that you still want to spread her ashes on your daddy's grave. Am I right?" He wore a suit that came from Gruel Modern Men's Wear, I could tell. The lapels could've been torn off and used for curtains. "Understand that I have to tell you what you have to do, and what's right, and all that. I have to tell you not to return to your daddy's grave armed with a dead mother, you know. I got to tell you never to dig up any ground in a graveyard, no matter what you think's for the best in the long run."
I said, "Hey, Buck, if I finish everything /all tell me to do before 180 hours is up, do I get to leave? Or will y'all find more things for me to do? Should I spread out my time, or work my butt off?"
Buck Hammond had a photograph of the preside
nt behind his desk, beside a framed miniature reproduction of the Bill of Rights. Off to the side was a needlepoint Lord's Prayer. "I trust that you would know what to do. Do the same thing any of those characters in a Raymond Carver novel would do."
I said, "I got it," and winked without winking. I smiled, but then wondered if it was all some kind of trick. Did I accidentally give Buck a B? I wondered.
"I think we have us something like two or three other men and women doing community service here in Gruel right now. Picking up trash on the roadside. Talking to teenagers about the dangers of smoking pot—that's the easiest community service there is right now seeing as there aren't but about two teenagers left in all of Gruel. Next time you decide to confront the law, you might want to get caught for smoking dope, Mr. Cary—you can get done with your community service in about thirty minutes."
I said I'd keep that in mind. I said, "What do I do, check in with you or someone every morning? I'm staying over at my parents' old place while all of this is going on. Hell, I guess I'll be staying there after it's done, too, seeing as I don't have a job."
My ex-student the parole officer said, "Ellis Cary. That kind of comes out like a complete sentence, don't it? Noun, verb, adjective. Is scary an adjective or an adverb? I was always taught that adverbs come right after verbs."
I shook my head. I wondered where my father's specter drifted at the moment, whether he spooked a germ-free lab or hovered above the crystalline air of Mount Whitney. Did my mother feel trapped within her plastic confines? I said, "There are too many rules in language, and there aren't enough at the same time, Buck. It's one of those things. I can't explain it all."
He handed me a can of paint and a four-inch brush. "You might as well start with the hydrants, I guess." He said, "Listen, I can bring in Les Miles and that graveyard guard on the pretense of asking them questions, if you want. I'll let you know. I'll call them in, and then you can go spread your momma anywhere you want without them putting you in jail."
I told Buck Hammond that I should've given him an A plus.
I walked off from the office like Michelangelo, thinking but one thing: Raymond Carver could've written a novel if he'd only given the main male character the same name throughout every story. Sure, the guy would've had a different wife every chapter, and a different job or lack thereof, but pretty much it would have held the same voice. I walked to the first hydrant, right in front of Roughhouse Billiards, and set down my can. It wasn't eight thirty in the morning. Some fellow came out and bet me a dollar he could put a cue ball on the sidewalk, strike it hard with his eighteen-ounce stick, and get it to bounce off my can of paint and balance, finally, on the fire hydrant. He said he was training to be the best trick shot player in history, and that people were out there already writing novels about him. I suggested that he talk to a man or woman somewhere in the vicinity doing community service lectures about the evils of drug usage.
I worked diligently until noon and had all of Gruel's fire hydrants sparkling red. I thought to myself, 176 hours to go. I walked back to Buck Hammond's office for another can of paint to say that I would start the alleyways, but he was at lunch. One of my community service comrades sat in Buck's office—the woman—and I said, "I'm betting you have to talk to people about pot." She wore a tie-dyed skirt and matching bandanna, a torn tank-top shirt that exposed her belly button ring, and a tattoo on her left bicep that looked like a bull's-eye, like a target.
"That's the other guy. I'm doing community service for throwing an apple core out the car window. The judge didn't believe me that an apple core will disintegrate into roadside compost. He got me for littering. Either a month in jail and a thousand-dollar fine, or two hundred hours of cleaning up the town." She slid her index and middle fingers beneath her nose and I thought for a second that she'd give me the secret Phi Beta Kappa handshake presently, but she didn't. "Are you the guy painting? I'm supposed to follow around behind you and clean up any drips you leave."
I introduced myself quite clearly: "My ... name ... is ... Ellis ... Cary," so she wouldn't hear "Hell-is-scary."
She stuck out her hand. She looked about the age of some of the first students I ever taught at Anders College, maybe thirty years old. She said, "Wow. Weird. I'm Cashion," She stuck out her hand. She didn't say her last name. And it was Cashion who said, "Hey, if I married you my name would be Cashion Cary. Like some kind of grocery store."
I don't know if it was because I was the kind of man who could figure out ways to get paid in full to teach textless classes, but I was way ahead of her. As soon as she said "Cashion," I had spelled it correctly in my mind, figured out what people would call her if we became betrothed, and in my mind's eye foresaw how we'd decorate my inherited house in Gruel. I said, "Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Is Cashion some kind of family name? I get it."
She nodded. "I wonder what time this guy's coming back. I need to see if I can take tomorrow off. I think I have the town pretty cleaned up. You haven't dripped a bunch of paint, have you?"
Ding-ding-ding! I thought. I thought, I will from now on. I said, "What's going on tomorrow?"
"For some reason I decided to go back to college after all these years. It's a long story that involves wanting to follow the Dead around straight out of high school, you know, but then Jerry died. I followed some other bands around, but it wasn't the same. I made enough money selling ginseng I probably wasn't supposed to dig up up in Tennessee, but nothing felt right. So I came back home here and enrolled in a couple classes over at Anders. I either want to become a nurse or a financial planner. I want to help people."
Please never come back, Buck Hammond, please never come back, Buck Hammond, I thought. I said, "You're having to take all those general education requirement courses, I'm guessing. I used to teach there."
Get this: Cashion Cary-to-be said, "The dean said I could come in as a sophomore due to life experiences. I mean, I'm having to pay for everything myself—I didn't get any scholarship money—but I'm not having to take English comp and all that. Maybe I should have. I'm kind of having trouble in this course called the Novels of Raymond Carver. Dr. Blocker said we're supposed to find out what we're supposed to find. Every day he sends us to the library to do research, but I have no clue what he really wants."
The Novels of Raymond Carver! I thought, setting down my new paint can. "You have to believe me when I say that I can help you immeasurably," I said. "I haven't been this serious since I told my father that it wasn't healthy to take a bath every hour. But that's another story. Listen, if you want help on the novels of Raymond Carver, then I'm your man. I'm the idiot who designed that class. You either have to hand him twenty blank pages stapled together at the top left or you and I can come up with a fake paper that'll make him scurry around trying to check your citations for the rest of his life. I'm willing to write the fake paper for you, if you want. I can do it in a second. We just have to come up with one or two made-up titles. This'll be fun. This'll be easy."
I waited for Cashion to say, "You're my hero, Ellis Cary. How can I ever repay you?" She didn't.
Buck Hammond walked back from lunch and I yelled out, "Tell this woman how much I taught you in my Raymond Carver novels class. Tell her. Tell her this very instant! Tell her now."
I took the paint can home and poured half my mother inside. Listen, I stirred her in. I whipped those ashes, no matter what. At one point my paint stick popped the sides of the can in a way that sounded like "Froggy went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh" over and over. I pureed. As I figured it, my mother would infiltrate and dust up Gruel full-time should my mean weird father decide to revisit his homeplace.
"He seemed to write a bunch of short stories," Cashion said from the dining room table where she spread out a slew of blank pages. "I read, I think, all his stories—some of them seemed to be the same, with only different endings or beginnings. And he wrote some poems, too."
"You damn right," I said. I wore a pair of goggles in case my mother's ashes flew up in my f
ace. I'd read and taught Sophocles enough to know better. "Listen, tomorrow when I go to paint, I promise you I won't spill anything if you promise not to leave me alone. Litterbug."
"Grave robber."
"Weird hippie who can't predict a band member's death."
"Loser."
Oh, we went on and on. I got all giddy and found myself daydreaming about discovered lost manuscripts of Raymond Carver, or of taking the time to write an entire novel about a wife who leaves her husband for smoking too much dope, and the blind man the husband brings in as a boarder. Or maybe a novel about a man who runs a drying-out facility and all of the funny-sad stories he hears from clients and visitors alike. I thought of a novel told from the point of view of a scared, scared divorced man who takes to carrying a gun at all times, eating rat poison on purpose, or maybe a guy whose wife leaves so he puts all their furniture out on the front lawn, arranged perfectly.
And so on. I fantasized about a life with Cashion, one where we would travel far from Gruel to live out our days. I would come back yearly, at night, to visit my parents' remains.
"You're not really going to paint your mother in town, are you?"
I said, "My mother became attached to the town after Dad died. Her neighbors slowly accepted her when they found out she wasn't afflicted with verminophobia. It seems logical to me. As a matter of fact, that should be a law—that every dead person get painted to a storefront or alleyway. Make kids think they're being watched all the time. Kind of like animism."
Cashion continued to sit at my mother's dining room table and printed her name in the dust. She said, "I was only kidding earlier about being a nurse. I'm not freaked out by molecules, but—still—there's no way I could see people dying all the time."
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