by Peter Straub
Monday morning I went into town and bought a long salami, a square of cheddar cheese, a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a bag of Cape Cod potato chips and two smaller bags of peanut M&M’s, a quart of milk, and a six-pack of Coca-Cola. Back in my room, I wrapped slices of salami and cheese in bread and washed down spoonfuls of peanut butter with Coke. Then I put on my coat and hurried to the quad to find three of my grades posted on the board. In English, I got a B+ on the exam and a B+ for the semester; in French, B and B, disappointing but not entirely unexpected. History, in which I thought I had done well, was a disaster. My C on the exam lowered my semester grade to B–. One of the conditions of my scholarship was that I had to maintain a certain average, and I’d been counting on a B in history to balance Ds or even a potential failure in my other two courses.
I stepped back from the bulletin board and noticed something move off to my left. Horst was watching me from beside a pillar at the top of the library steps. His attitude, of an almost regal patience, suggested that he had been there for some time. He drew a gloved hand from the pocket of his duffle coat and gave a slow, ironic wave. I lowered my head and took the nearest path in the opposite direction, on my way back to the right place.
Once I had entered the clearing, worries about examinations and grade-point averages floated off into the transparent air. For a disembodied time, I became a recording eye. Squirrels repeated their comic turns. A fox stepped out between the maples, froze, and rewound itself as if on film. When the air began to darken, I reluctantly got to my feet.
Tuesday morning, I cowered starving in bed until 11:00 A.M., got up to gulp milk from the carton and gnaw at cheese and bread, climbed back in bed for another hour of deep-breathing exercises, and finally managed to propel myself into the shower. There was the slightest possibility that our chemistry grades might be announced that afternoon. Most professors posted their grades before 3:00 P.M., and shortly before that hour I hurried into the quad and inspected the board. My section’s chemistry results had not been posted. I rammed junk food into my pockets and on the way to my sanctuary went into the brick cubicle of the dormitory post office to check my mailbox.
Wedged like a letter bomb behind the glass door of my box was an unstamped, cream-colored envelope addressed to “Mr. Ned Dunstar.” It bore the return address of the dean of student affairs.
Dear Mr. Dunstar,
I regret the necessity of informing you of a troubling matter recently brought to my attention by Mr. Roman Polk, the Manager of Food Service Personnel at Middlemount College, in which capacity Mr. Polk supervises our full-time kitchen staff and those members of the student body for whom Food Services Placements have been awarded in accordance with the conditions of their Middlemount Student Support Scholarships.
Mr. Polk informs me that you have failed to meet seven out of ten of your last Food Service Placement appointments, furthermore that you were absent on sick leave upon nine previous occasions. This is a matter of concern to us all.
We will meet in my office at 7:30 A.M. on the first academic day of the coming term, January 20, for a discussion of Mr. Polk’s charges. You remain a valued member of the Middlemount community, and if for some reason Food Services was an inappropriate placement, another might be found. In the meantime, I wish you success in your examinations.
Sincerely yours,
Clive Macanudo
Dean of Student Affairs
When I emerged from the little cell block housing our mailboxes, who stood in the cold athwart the cement path, resplendent in a long, forest-green loden coat, fresh comb tracks dividing his thick hair? Horst might as well have been wearing a Tyrolean hat with a feather jutting from the band. He glanced at the letter protruding from my coat pocket. “Are you all right?”
“Stop following me, you creep.” I tried to walk around him.
“Please, forget about the other night.” Horst moved in front of me. “I made a silly mistake and misinterpreted our brief conversation of the day before.”
Evidently I had spoken to him in the student bar that Friday and forgotten about it later. That was fine with me. I had succeeded in forgetting most of Friday’s events as they were happening, and I certainly did not want to remember anything I might have said to Horst. “Fine,” I said. “But if you don’t stop following me, I’m still going to cut you.”
“Please, Ned, really!” He stepped back and raised his gloved hands in surrender. “Only, you do not look well. I ask as a friend, are you all right? Is anything wrong?”
“Here we go,” I said. “Count of three, remember? One.”
“Ned, please, you don’t own a knife. In fact, you are about as dangerous as a bunny rabbit.” Smiling, he lowered his hands. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee. You could tell your problems to me, after which I will explain how to fix them, after which I will bore you with mine, after which we will drink a beer and decide our problems are not so serious after all.”
“After which we will go back to your room and fix your boring problems by taking off our clothes.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Horst said. “Honestly. I am simply offering to be of help.”
“Then simply get out of my way.” I walked straight toward him, and he got out of my way.
Later that afternoon, I sat frozen at the base of a giant oak and attended to the deep, nearly inaudible sound, as of powerful machinery at work, filtering up through the snowpack. Snatches of high-pitched music resounded either from the air itself or from the movement of the air through the branches. The music-laden air filled with grains of darkness, the grains coalesced, and the darkness blotted out the light.
Wednesday morning, I saw my guitar case propped beside the door. The sight immediately suggested the inspiration of adding to the music of Jones’s Woods. I jumped out of bed.
Having breakfasted on sour milk and Cape Cod potato chips, I edged into the quad, keeping a weather eye out for Horst. He did not show himself. Neither did my chemistry results, although Professor Medley’s conclusions had been posted on the board. While the names of everyone else in my section were followed by letters indicating their grades, after “Dunstan, Ned” appeared only the nongrade “Inc,” abbreviation-speak for “Incomplete.” I stumbled back to my room and rammed the day’s nourishment into my coat pockets, remembering as I did so the summons from On High. Once again I entered the glum post office and found an official envelope pressed against the glass window of my box. Clive Macanudo: The Sequel. This time, he spelled my name right.
Dear Mr. Dunstan,
I apologize for the secretarial error which resulted in the misspelling of your name throughout my letter of yesterday.
This morning, Professor Arnold Medley of our Chemistry Department spoke to me concerning your performance in his Chemistry 1 course. Professor Medley greeted your results on his final examination with a great deal of surprise. As you submitted the only perfect examination of the Professor’s long experience and went on to solve several extra-credit questions, your numerical grade on the examination was 127 out of 100, or A++.
Professor Medley is of the opinion that no student with grades consistently at or below the C level could have so greatly improved his grasp of the material as to earn an A++ on the final examination without unlawful assistance. I spoke on your behalf. Professor Medley agreed that at no time had he observed you cheating in any way and could offer no proof that you had not earned your result honestly. However, he found the result so anomalous as to justify his suspicions.
We have reached the following accommodation. You shall retake the Chemistry 1 final examination under conditions of the strictest security and at your earliest convenience. I suggest 7:45 A.M. on this coming Friday, should you be present on campus, and if not, at 6:30 A.M. on January 20, immediately prior to our meeting concerning Mr. Polk’s allegations. The retesting shall take place in my office, with Professor Medley and myself present. I take the liberty of recommending that you spend the intervening days in prepara
tion.
Sincerely yours,
Clive Macanudo
Dean of Student Affairs
The usual sense of being home settled my nerves as soon as I entered the woods. The rushing in my ears yielded to the creaking of laden branches, the territorial chatter of birds, the clicks and taps made by squirrels in the course of their missions. Eventually I began to hear the trebles chiming from glittering icicles and soon after, the deep bass humming beneath the icepack. I opened the guitar case, took out my instrument, and reverently settled it into the hollow between my hunched shoulders and the tops of my thighs.
Shortly before noon the next day, I awoke with no memory of having returned to the campus. I stumbled out of bed, sneezed thunderously, and thrust myself into the most convenient clothing. By force of habit I stopped into the mail-jail on the way out of the dormitory complex. Another official envelope had been jammed against the rectangular glass window. “Clive, baby,” I said and tugged out the enclosed letter with great curiosity.
Mr. Dunstan,
Once again the morning has been disrupted by a visit from one of your Professors. Your position here at Middlemount is in grave peril.
Professor Roger Flagship demanded that I inspect the three blue books which you submitted to him upon conclusion of the final examination in Introductory Calculus. Professor Flagship informed me the examination was of the multiple-choice variety and that blue books were to be used for computation. He further informed me that he intended to take the steps necessary to effect your expulsion from Middlemount College. Not only had you failed the exam by correctly answering only twelve out of one hundred questions, you had subjected both his course and himself to mockery. Professor Flagship drew my attention to several obscene caricatures of himself contained within the blue books.
Furthermore, Professor Flagship states that on the evening of the examination you appeared in his office to beg for the return of your blue books, a grade of Incomplete in Introductory Calculus, and an opportunity to repeat the course. Following his refusal of these extraordinary requests, you responded to his efforts to secure the blue books, which he had as yet not read, by pushing him back into his chair and then fleeing. He attributed your behavior to hysterical panic and chose not to bring it to my attention. The contents of the blue books decided him otherwise.
After thoughtful consideration, also after factoring in the other matters before us, I ask you to report to our January 20 meeting at the originally designated time of 7:30 A.M. with any records, along with evidence of previous psychiatric treatment, which might assist me in protecting your position here at Middlemount College.
To facilitate the search for your records, I am sending a copy of this letter to your guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Grant of Naperville, Illinois.
Sincerely yours,
Clive Macanudo
Dean of Student Affairs
I blew my nose on Clive’s letter and pitched it into the wastebasket, more disturbed by his sending it to the Grants than by my imminent expulsion. Phil and Laura would understand that what I was doing was vastly more important than the pablum dished out in my classes.
On my way back to the center of the universe I thought I caught a glimpse of a green loden coat and a flash of bright hair in the midst of the row of trees bordering the western end of the campus. The lovesick stalker vanished the instant I looked again, and I put him out of my mind.
After an hour’s silent meditation had permitted me to hear the music in the air, after another hour of adding my part to it, a gathering sense of being as yet not absolutely in the right place caused me to get back on my feet and move deeper into the woods until I came upon the ruins of a cottage. I creaked open the door and beheld the rotted wooden walls, the single broken window, the litter of feathers, tiny skeletons, and dried animal feces on the dirty floor, and knew that here it was at last, the right place. It, too, was an instrument. Steady music flowed through the cottage, produced by the wind hissing through the gaps in the timbers and the patter of squirrels in the crawl space overhead. I enjoyed a blissful hour of adding a modest accompaniment and, just before dark, ran to my room for blankets and provisions and hurried back while I still had light enough to see.
The cottage emerged from the surrounding darkness like a tall shadow in the sacred woods. Faint strains of the music within called to me, and I rushed over the snow and opened the creaking door. When I entered, I seemed instantly to plummet through the rotting floor. I fell; I saw nothing; I did not fear. A long, shabby, once-handsome room took shape before me. Out of my range of vision, a man spoke of smoke and gold and corpses on a battlefield. My head pounded, and my stomach was afflicted. On the mantel over the fireplace stood a dying Boston fern, a stuffed fox advancing within a glass bell, and a brass clock with weights revolving left-right, right-left, left-right. This was backward, it was past, and I had been here before. I fell to my knees on the worn Oriental carpet. Before I vomited, the world melted and restored itself, and the contents of my stomach drizzled onto the ruined floor. Home, I thought.
11
While still presentable enough to go into town, I stocked up on canned food and camping equipment. I got a sleeping bag and a battery-powered lamp. After I realized that I could make use of the fireplace, I bought bags of charcoal briquettes, a hatchet, lots of fire starter, a grate, and packages of frozen meat I buried in the snow and thawed out over flames coaxed from lumps of charcoal and chopped-up deadwood. Some nights, raccoons climbed through gaps in the flooring and fell asleep like dogs in front of the dwindling fire. Toward the end of my forty-five days in the cottage, when going into town would have invited arrest or hospitalization, I dropped into my old meal-job kitchen late at night and stole whatever I couldn’t gobble on the spot. Forest-music, nature-music, planet-music took up the rest of my time. My cold turned into pneumonia, and I took the fevers, sweats, and exhaustion for signs of grace.
Everyone else feared that the loss of my scholarship had driven me to suicide. Phil and Laura flew to Middlemount and participated in the search for my hypothetical remains. A livid Clark Darkmund declared that not only had he not invited me on a family vacation to Barbados, his winter break had been spent entirely in Hibbing, Minnesota. The police searched the college grounds, with no result. The town of Middlemount was canvassed, with next to no result. The winsome senior photo in my high school yearbook reminded one Main Street shop owner of a recent customer, but he had no idea of where the customer might have gone after leaving the store. After stapling posters all over town and campus, the Grants returned to Naperville.
Horst never bothered to look at the posters. He assumed that I had been ducking him. When he did finally happen to notice the resemblance between the photograph and myself, he reported to Dean Macanudo. Within the hour, he was leading a deputation of local police and emergency medical technicians into Jones’s Woods. They found me slumped over my warped guitar and picking at its two remaining strings, and unceremoniously rolled me onto a stretcher.
Seeing a dream-Horst peering down at me from within the upturned collar of his loden coat, I asked, “Why do I think you’re following me, Horst?”
“You told me to watch out for you,” said the figment.
I looked around at the crumbling walls and the mess of blankets on the floor in an unwelcome return of sanity. It had all been a gigantic error. Horst was real after all, and I had been wrong. This had never been the right place for which I had mistaken it.
The first person to visit me in Middlemount’s Tri-Community Hospital was Dean Clive Macanudo, a glossy diplomat whose pencil mustache and Sen-Sen breath could not entirely conceal his terror of any actions I or my guardians might see fit to take against the college. It never occurred to me to sue Middlemount, nor did it occur to Laura, who walked into my room on the second day of my hospitalization. Phil had been denied permission to leave work, or so she said, and although his absence meant that we could speak more freely, the weight of my guilt made her stricken pres
ence a torment. Two days later, Laura went back to the Middlemount Inn for a nap, and I checked out of the hospital, went into the middle of town, passed the inn, turned into the bus station, and vamoosed.
From then on, I kept moving. I had jobs in grocery stores, in bars and shoe stores, jobs where I strapped on headsets and tried to persuade strangers to buy things they didn’t need. I lived in Chapel Hill, Gainesville, Boulder, Madison, Beaverton, Sequim, Evanston, and little towns you wouldn’t know unless you were from Wisconsin or Ohio. (Rice Lake, anyone? Azure?) I spent about a year in Chicago, but never went to either Edgerton or Naperville. After I’d been living at the same address long enough to get a telephone listing, Star surprised me a couple of times by phoning me or sending a card. Three or four times a year, I called the Grants and tried to convince them that my life had not dwindled into failure. In 1984, Phil, a lifelong non-smoker, died of lung cancer. I went to his funeral and spent a couple of days in my old room, staying up late and talking with Laura. She seemed more beautiful than ever before. Sometimes we clung together and wept for everything that could not be undone. Two years later, Laura told me that she was remarrying and moving to Hawaii. Her new husband was a retired lawyer with a lot of land on Maui.
Every now and again, a stranger would approach me and back away in embarrassment or annoyance at my failure to give acknowledgment; some version of this happens to almost everybody. In the Omaha Greyhound bus terminal, a woman of about thirty recoiled from the sight of me, grabbed the arm of the man next to her, and pulled him through a departure gate. Two years later, an older woman in a fur coat strode up to me in the Denver airport and slapped my face hard enough to raise a welt that showed the stitching on her glove. On a street corner in Chicago’s Loop, someone gripped my collar and jerked me out of the path of a hurtling taxicab, and when I looked around, a kid in a stocking cap said, “Man, your brother, he took off.” Fine. Another time in another year, a guy next to me in a bar, I don’t even remember where, told me that my name was George Peters and that I had been his history T.A. at Tulane.