End of Story

by Peter Abrahams

  Morales looked up, doubly triumphant, fighter and artist. Silence in the room.

  “The bell rang?” Ivy said.

  “Sure,” said Morales. “For when recess was over. Time to go back in the school.” Something like worry crossed his face. “You sayin’ I should put that in, maybe explain a little?”

  Harrow, not looking up, still writing, said, “He could call it ‘Recess.’”

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “That would—”

  “Don’ wanna,” said Morales.

  Harrow raised his head. “Suit yourself,” he said. “It couldn’t matter less, anyway.”

  “Huh?” said Morales. “What’s that spose to mean?”

  “Figure it out,” Harrow said.

  El-Hassam opened his eyes, but otherwise didn’t move, head on the table, a little pool of saliva forming under the corner of his mouth.

  Morales started to say something. Ivy beat him to it.

  “The title’s fine as it is,” she said, maybe louder than necessary. “Who’s next?”

  No volunteers.

  “Pope,” she said. “What have you got?”

  “Um,” the boy said. “Nothin’.”

  “Babycake got nothin’,” said Morales. “Just like Felix, only pretty.” He turned to Ivy. “Remember Felix, teach?”

  “Of course.”

  “Big investigation about who cut his throat,” Morales said. “Did my best to give them some help, even though they didn’t ask nice.” He leaned an inch or two across the table. “You seen how they didn’t ask nice, right, teach?”

  For a crazy moment, Ivy thought: He knows. But surely that was impossible. Her mouth went dry anyway. The noisy wall clock ticked away two seconds. Then Harrow spoke up. “We’re wasting time here. Send over that sheet, Babycake. I’ll read it.”

  The boy didn’t move. El-Hassam suddenly sat up, wide-awake, and handed the sheet to Harrow. Harrow read it aloud.

  “‘Bugs Bunny is my favorite influence. He thinks fast and don’t take nothin’ from nobody. When Elmer Fudd come after him with a shotgun Bugs bit off some carrot and shoved the rest down the barrel and the gun blew up and Elmer Fudd turned all black. This was when Elmer Fudd was hunting wabbits. He talks funny, I don’t know why. I try to think what Bugs Bunny would do when I get in some situation but it always come to me too late or maybe never. Thanks for reminding me of Bugs Bunny, teacher. Sometimes I forget.’”

  Harrow handed the sheet to El-Hassam. El-Hassam placed it on the table in front of the boy. The boy didn’t notice. He was watching Harrow, a surprised look on his face, like he’d just stumbled on something new.

  “That’s good,” Ivy said.

  The boy turned to her. “Yeah?”

  “Very,” Ivy said.

  “What the fuck?” said Morales. “Bugs Bunny ain’t even real, for fuck sake.”

  “True,” Ivy said. “But the thing is—”

  Harrow rose. “That’s no way to talk to the teacher,” he said.

  Morales pushed back his chair.

  “Sit down, please,” Ivy said. “We can express ourselves freely here and I have no problem with—”

  Moffitt came through the doorway. “Time’s up.”

  They all turned to him.

  El-Hassam spoke. “We were just getting started,” he said.

  “Oh, then excuse me,” said Moffitt. “I’ll come back some other time.”

  But he didn’t move. Everyone got up.

  “It always goes so quickly,” Ivy said. “Must be a good sign. Just give me what you wrote—I’ll get it all typed up and we’ll start with Harrow next time.”

  Ivy collected the pencils. Everyone filed out—Morales first, handing her his work, face blank, then two more blank faces, El-Hassam’s and the boy’s, and then came Harrow. He gave her his sheet.

  “Sorry we didn’t get to you,” Ivy said.

  “No problem,” Harrow said. He looked down at her. Those dark eyes, but not like coal: instead, some harder rock and much more polished. “Wouldn’t mind seeing yours,” he said.

  “Next time,” Ivy said.

  He smiled, went out. Ivy picked up a sheet of paper that had fallen under El-Hassam’s chair and followed.

  Something very strange was going on outside the door, something hard to take in all at once. It came to Ivy in pieces: first, an inmate who looked like Morales—same size, same enormous arms covered with the same tattoos, differentiated mostly by a burn scar covering half his face—talking to Moffitt, his tone aggrieved. Second, Moffitt turning to him, an irritated look on his face. Third, El-Hassam and the boy drifting across the polished floor of the great domed room. Fourth, Harrow, moving in another direction, toward some inmates in the distance. He didn’t see: five, Morales, leaning tight to the wall, right by the door, behind Moffitt’s back. And what was that thing in Morales’s hand, held at waist level? Six, a toothbrush, lime green, nothing unusual except for the way Morales gripped it by the brush end and the fact of bringing a toothbrush to the writing class in the first place. And seven, how the brushless end had been sharpened to a point.

  Morales lunged forward.

  Ivy yelled, “No.”

  Morales drove the toothbrush into Harrow’s back, between the shoulder blades. But not quite between the shoulder blades, because Harrow was already turning, and the toothbrush struck on the left side, more in the shoulder than the back.

  For a moment, everything slowed down to no motion at all. Morales and Harrow, half-turned, were looking right into each other’s eyes, as though participating in something intimate. The toothbrush stuck out of Harrow’s back an inch or two. Morales reached out with the heel of his hand and pressed it all the way in, out of sight.

  Morales smiled.

  Harrow, face white but voice almost normal, said, “You can’t write for shit.”

  Morales stopped smiling, but traces of it were still lingering when Harrow punched him with his right fist, very hard and from point-blank range, a punch that landed on Morales’s left eye, the big middle-finger knuckle right on the eyeball. Morales staggered back, raising his hands to his face, and bumped into Ivy, knocking her down.

  The back of her head hit the hard floor. Everything went white for a moment. A wave of noise roared in and the whole prison seemed to shake. Ivy rolled over, and through that white veil saw Morales down beside her, head turned sideways, the undamaged side up. A foot—sneaker, no laces—swung into the picture and stamped on that undamaged side of Morales’s face, caving it in with a sound like a broomstick cracking.

  Ivy rose to her knees. Harrow, swaying a little, blood pouring down his arm, stood over Morales. Moffitt came up behind him, nightstick raised, and swung it across the back of Harrow’s head in a measured way. Harrow slumped down. The inmate with the burned face bent over Harrow and said, “Better hope you die now.” Guards pulled him away.

  Twenty-one

  About twenty minutes later, Sergeant Tocco walked her out of the administration building. The wall cast its shadow over them and over the street, rising to the rooftops of the houses on the other side like a high-tide line from ancient times. The siren of the ambulance faded away.

  “Where are they taking him?” Ivy said.

  “Plattsburgh Regional, most likely,” said Sergeant Tocco. “You all right?”

  Ivy’s hands were shaking, and for the first time in her life she actually needed a drink, but she said, “Yes.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Sergeant Tocco. “That would have been a nightmare.”

  “What would have?” said Ivy.

  “You getting hurt,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Would have meant my job.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ivy said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Sergeant Tocco said. “We dodged one, that’s all. Have a safe drive back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And best of luck.”

  “Best of luck?”

  “With your future,” said Sergeant Tocco, “down in the city. The writing
program is suspended as of now. If we ever start up again, I’ll let you know.”

  “But, Sergeant Tocco, I—”

  He held up his hand. “Not your fault. These grudge matches end up playing themselves out, one way or another.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Like between Harrow and the Latin Kings. After a while they get tired of killing each other and we get a little peace and quiet.”

  “But aren’t you going to do something about it?” Ivy said.

  Sergeant Tocco shrugged. “Probably transfer Morales somewheres else before Harrow gets out of the hospital.”

  “When will that be?”

  “No telling,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Sometimes never.”

  “Never?” Ivy said. “But he got onto the stretcher under his own power.”

  “I’ve seen some funny things,” said Sergeant Tocco.

  They climbed the hill, came to her car. “What about the other Latin Kings?” Ivy said. “Why not transfer Harrow instead?”

  “Have to transfer him clear out of the country,” Sergeant Tocco said. “The system’s crawling with Latin Kings.”

  He opened the door for her. She got in.

  “How old are you?” he said.

  Ivy told him.

  “If I were you,” he said. “Forget all this. Go back to your normal life.”

  Ivy took out her keys. “Are hospital visits permitted?”

  He gazed down at her, eyes invisible in the double shade of his cap brim and the high wall. “Why’re you asking me that?”

  “He’s a very good writer,” Ivy said. “Maybe even great, potentially.”

  “So what?” said Sergeant Tocco.

  Plus he’s innocent. But no point getting into all that with Sergeant Tocco. “So I’d like to have a discussion about his plans.”

  “Plans?” said Sergeant Tocco. “What plans?”

  “Writing plans,” said Ivy.

  “A discussion in the hospital?”

  “When he’s up to it.”

  “A final discussion?” said Sergeant Tocco.

  “I hope not,” Ivy said. “My goal would be to get him published.”

  “A final face-to-face discussion, then,” said Sergeant Tocco.

  What about prison visits? Ivy thought, but she kept that to herself, too, and just nodded.

  “You’ll need approval from the warden,” Sergeant Tocco said. Long pause. “Published?” he said. “Like in a real book?”

  “Yes,” said Ivy.

  “I’ll check with the warden.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t count on it.”

  The problem with thinking so much about the elements of stories, Ivy realized—elements like turning points, metaphor, theme—was that you could get swallowed up in seeing your own life that way and stop living normally. Maybe Emerson was right about the unexamined life not being worth living, but what about the overly examined life? What was that? For example, the way she was paused like this just outside the Dannemora town line at the junction of 374: so easy to read it as a metaphorical crossroads or turning point. Right led her back to the city, her shift tomorrow, maybe even a weekend in Bermuda; left led to the two-rutted turnoff that would take her to Wilderness Lake. No reason at all to turn left, except for a vague desire to have another look at the spot where she’d seen the bear. Why not just simply live a little, stop examining? Ivy turned left.

  Ten minutes later, she rounded the last switchback and bumped up into the clearing. Nothing bloody and horrible going on today. All the trees were bare now, their branches black against a silvery sky. Ivy opened her folder, found Harrow’s page from the class.

  An Important Person In My Life

  is you, the writing teacher. What do I know about Ivy Seidel? Not much. I know about her “Caveman” story, and that she had a hard time writing it. I know she likes coming here, and thinks she has a feel for this place. I know what she looks like when she’s just about to get an idea. And then there’s her apartment—decorations, view, bed. (For a little while she was my eyes, on the outside. That really worked.)

  What I don’t know is how she’ll look in eighteen years.

  Ivy got out of the car, walked over to the edge of the clearing where the bear had been. Leaves covered the ground—brown from the oaks, red from the maples, yellow from some tree she didn’t know. No remains, like antlers, hooves or a tail. No evidence. Ivy stood there, very still, waiting for some idea to arrive. She could feel it, struggling to be born, a new understanding, not a thought about her “Caveman” story, but of Harrow. Then she thought: How do I look right now? And the idea, whatever it was, sank back down, out of reach.

  Her cell phone rang.

  How was that possible in a place like this? She thought of Dragan, the cell-phone relays, the Neanderthal unconsciousness.

  “Hi. It’s Danny.”

  “Hi.”

  “I can hardly hear you.”

  She raised her voice. “Hi.” And heard her own echo, the only sound in the woods.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “On my way home.”

  “From the Dannemora thing?”

  She heard a faint crack, somewhere behind her, turned and saw nothing, just the trees and that silver sky. “Yes,” she said. “It’s over, actually.”

  “The class? You mean forever?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s complicated. I—”

  “I missed that.”

  “Nothing. I’ll explain later.”

  “I’m glad,” Danny said.

  “What?”

  “Glad. And speaking of later, did you get my message about—” Static blotted out the rest.

  “About what?” Ivy said, raising her voice.

  The line suddenly cleared. “Bermuda,” Danny said at the top of his lungs.

  “Yes,” Ivy said. She went silent.

  Danny lowered his voice. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Bermuda. It’s stupid.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Should have known,” Danny said. “Not your kind of thing at all. I’ve got a better idea—Montreal.”

  “Montreal?”

  “Yeah. They’ve got a cool music scene. I can get tickets to this warehouse thing on Saturday night. Word is the Edge is going to sit in.”

  “This is in Montreal?”

  “Yeah. The Edge. How does that sound?”

  Montreal. “Sounds good,” Ivy said.

  Sudden static. “Missed that.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “What did you—”

  The line went dead.

  Ivy heard another cracking sound in the woods, this one a little louder than before. A cracking sound but the woods were still. She got in the Saab, turned it around, drove home. Montreal: like something that was meant to be. At that moment Ivy got a bad feeling in her stomach, the kind of feeling that accompanied motives that were twisted and impure; but not bad enough to stop her.

  “This is my dream,” said Danny, his Boxster topping a rise on 91, “to own a place like that.” He pointed to a picture-book Vermont farm on distant slope: smoke curling up from the red farmhouse into a blue sky with puffy white clouds; sheep down below like fallen cloud scraps.

  “When will you be able to make it come true?” Ivy said.

  “Oh, I could do it now,” said Danny. “It’s just my dream.”

  Ivy gave him a long look. Danny had a nice profile: nice even lines, an intelligently shaped mouth, if that made any sense. He turned, caught her looking, smiled. “Whee,” he said, and stepped on the gas. The car shot forward with amazing power.

  “Danny!”

  He slowed down. “Didn’t meant to scare you.” He patted her knee.

  “Tell me what you do, Danny,” Ivy said.

  “You know what I do.”

  “I mean exactly,” Ivy said. “So it sticks in my head.”


  “Why?” said Danny. “It’s not that interesting, unless you’re part of the action.”

  “Try me,” Ivy said.

  Danny nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What do you know about finance?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sure you do. How did you finance the Saab, for example?”

  “Bruce practically gave it to me.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes.”

  Danny’s brow furrowed. Ivy saw how he might look one day: actually better than he did now, stronger, more solid. What was there not to like about Danny?

  “How long are you planning to stay at that job?” he said.

  “Long as I have to,” Ivy said.

  “Won’t be long.”

  “Why do you say that? Whit turned me down.” She didn’t mention the after-the-last-minute revision Whit had agreed to look at; a real long shot, she saw now.

  “So I heard,” said Danny. “But there’ll be others.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “It’s obvious,” Danny said. “And what about The Surveyor?”

  “What about it?”

  “That’s what you should be doing.”