The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity

by Alex Kudera

  “Dude, I was roaming all over our old dorm and no one was home. Do you know what I mean?”

  “It’s finals. They’re all here in the library.”

  “Dude, I went on every floor, knocked on every door. Like no one was home. Do you know what I mean?”

  Even after simple statements, John will follow with his trademark refrain. The grass is green. Do you know what I mean?

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Dude, I walked all over the library and everyone is working. Reading and writing, studying fucking flash cards. Do you know what I mean?”

  “It’s finals. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  “I went all the way to the top of the library, you know, the last floor where they keep the old bound volumes of Time and Life and the Saturday Evening Post. All that musty old shit from the forties and fifties. You know what I mean?”

  I nod.

  “Stuck between July and December 1941 and January to June 1942 of Life, I found this!”

  John tosses a used condom at me. Its contents have dried. It smells more rubbery than spermy, like a cross between an old shoe and an old book. I look up at John and see his desperation.

  “I know what you mean, John.”

  “Can you believe this fucking shit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is supposed to be finals and I find this fucking shit, pasted right over Pearl Harbor.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Let’s go do some mushrooms.”

  I leave the prophylactic on the library steps.

  III. Night Turns to Day

  Back in the kitchen, John hands me the plastic bag. I stare at the contents, then drop them on the table. I begin splitting the mushrooms into two piles, breaking up the larger ones to ensure an even distribution. John removes two cans of cola from the fridge.

  “Pick your passion.”

  John appears to critically judge the two. I presume he is looking for the larger one, so it surprises me when he chooses the smaller pile.

  “With all my finals, I deserve the big pile,” he apologizes. It would seem impolite to slide him an extra shroom, implying his judgment is poor.

  He opens his can and begins chewing. I do the same. The cola does little to mask the bitterness of the meal. John talks and chews.

  “Life is like a bitter root. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Where?”

  “This kitchen. This school. This country. The whole fucking planet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s Jake?”

  “He survived his suicide attempt.”

  “Man, I wish I had the guts to even try that. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  John and I chew on in silence. After a while, he leaves the table.

  ***

  Back outside, exploring, the shrooms accent the brightness of the night. I circle around every tree as I wander back to the center of campus.

  I find myself snooping through the narrow first floor of the freshman dorm. The ugly brown carpet stinks of vomit and beer. Dead smells from decades ago as much as the current day’s enthusiasms. Hearing noises from above, I ascend the wooden staircase and enter an open room. Inside, I find a collection of jocks, enough muscle for a Division III offensive line. Sitting on facing sides of the room’s two single beds, they suck down plastic Bud cups and crowd a sweating pony keg. In Massachusetts accents they offer me “beah.” I accept and sit. A few sex stories, baseball talk, and pledge speak. I feel full of wracked nerves, and the beer does little to quiet my soul. After a second cup, I stumble up a floor.

  The third floor is my old hall. I walk to room 313. My room. I shared a two-room triple with players of varsity lacrosse and soccer, stocky men who smelled of baby powder and sweat.

  The door stands ajar. I push it open and look into the front room. On the pale green rug recline three female freshmen.

  “Hark, who goes there?”

  “It is I, Andy, a previous tenant.”

  “Very nice. As if we haven’t heard that line before.”

  “No, really,” I begin but then cease. “Who might you be?”

  They introduce themselves as the three witches. In black blouses and sweatpants, they surround a lidless red hot pot whose contents boil. They look short and cute, perhaps a bit chunky, of moderate acne and cleavage.

  “Toil, toil; brimstone and bubble.”

  “Shakespeare test,” they tell me.

  “What does being a witch mean?”

  The leader speaks.

  “We do not signify. Nor are we objectified. We transcend binary logic. We cast spells, we shrink souls. We send chills, we stir bowls.”

  I am intrigued, experiencing the inner stir from another’s enlightenment. I ask for their names and receive three Jennifers—Jen, Jennifer, and Genne spelled like the beer. They say they enroll in all of the same courses.

  “Can you predict my future?”

  They nod and beckon me closer. I kneel by the witches and their pot of mystery soup. On command, I open my palm and extend my hand. They prick my finger and let a drop of blood enter their soup. They add a lock of my dirty blonde hair. They demand a snippet of shoelace, a strand of saliva, ink from my pen, a slight curl of fuzz from my left-leaning testicle, a smidgen of green mucus, my signature written over the box score of my favorite baseball team.

  One Jen stirs, while another solemnly quotes from Macbeth, and the third names the speaker. Banquo. Lady Macbeth. I ask the first Jenny for more on witches.

  “A witch is a woman. A witch is a woman who flies beyond the time. The time is cruel capitalism and misogynist corporate structures. A witch elides the technocracy and the culture of mission statements and football. While sympathetic to the plight of disenfranchised minority warlocks, a witch is wary of all commingling with men.”

  By commingling with me, are they denying my manhood?

  “And me?”

  “You look like a boy.”

  The soup simmers, and I grow weary. Just as my eyes close, they announce time for tea. It is strong stuff, black leaves and spiced. “Macduff,” one whispers. We sip as they inform me of my future.

  “You journey to a far away land. Much inner struggle and personal discovery. Death encountered and transcended. Possible solitary moment during fresh-water fishing. You will feel the full power of the Lord.”

  I am suspicious. Whose Lord? Is this last part metaphor?

  The witches describe their own pasts and futures: desolate suburban childhoods in Northern Jersey and Long Island; career plans in cities, grad school in theory, or the practice of life. To change society, elide the fathers. Marriage can wait. Most men are sleaze.

  I ask to see the interior room.

  I move into my old room. They call it their womb. Whereas I slept alone here, they have moved in all three beds. A television is on, showing a political drama about an older man and younger woman, a staff assistant. It is confusing because I am unable to ascertain if I’m watching entertainment or news.

  I press the letter A on a computer keyboard, and a word-processing program appears on the screen. I begin writing and continue unabated for what feels like at least an hour. I write four full pages, a rough start to what you read here—The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity. They knock on the door and demand their womb. I say so long to these ladies of Macbeth, print my text, and leave.

  ***

  The tower clock reads 2:53 a.m. I have been up for over twelve hours, and for the first time all day I feel wide awake. I breathe in the crisp night air. Behind the library, I descend the grassy slope that leads to the center of the college—the old gravel track and the football field. Midway down the slope, I take a seat on the grass. I look up and see stars. I’d never seen so many stars before moving to this rural campus. I stare out into the void. Could the new synthetic
track surfaces be better for the knees and shins?

  In the distance, on the opposite side of the oval track, I see an expert on the matter, a closet athlete, running at three in the morning. As he rounds the far corner and approaches along the left straightaway, I see he is doing fast walking. From fifty yards, I see an aged pale male widely swishing his hips. At thirty yards, I recognize Professor Licht. He looks like a spry ghost in his grey sweat shirt and pants with fluorescent green lining.

  From my post above the track, I watch the figure move away and circle around again. I imagine Licht as history personified, huffing and puffing, his wrinkled butt swishing through the repetitions, farting upwind. At once, he is forward progress and endless cycle. I consider approaching him and explaining my dilemma. Licht has no doubt heard it all before. Perhaps he has even understood some of it.

  “Licht.” My voice makes a quivering whisper, not nearly enough to call for the help of history. I feel a little dizzy. Am I hallucinating? Or is this the actual Licht? I decide against a second sounding, opting instead to stumble away.

  ***

  I stride away from Licht and toward Browning College, home of the Dean’s office and student records. In my drug-marred state, I feel an intensity of self-loathing, so I decide to erase my presence at Ward. I will sneak into Browning and steal away the records of me.

  I pass the night security guard. He has curly red hair and freckles. I smile at him and receive a slight nod.

  From twenty yards, I see the smooth brown stone of the three-story building, what once housed the entire college. As I approach, I hear noises. Murmuring. It is coming from my right. I quietly step in that direction and peek around the corner. Under a nearby tree, away from the lamplight, I discern two dark figures. One is folding a piece of paper around a slab of stone. I can barely hear their voices.

  “Man, make your statement. Throw it.”

  “You throw it.”

  The first voice is the angry one from the protest earlier in the day. So this must be black militant action—throwing a rock with a message through the Dean’s window. I instantly feel small and petty. These two have a cause to fight for, genuine injustice, real pain. My night wandering is leisure time. I wish I could vanish. I hurry away.

  Under dark skies and then street lamps, I head to the town’s only convenience store. It is three blocks down and open all night. I pass low-rise clusters known for all-night parties to the left and subsidized housing known for poverty to the right. Shifting my gaze to either side, I cannot discern any difference between either group’s beige and brown residential units. I remember to walk on the left side of the street.

  On the sidewalk before the deli’s entrance, a homeless man sits Indian style on a stained mauve blanket.

  “Spare any change?”

  I shake my head no and enter.

  Inside, I feel jolted by the brightness of the lighting and the chill of strong A/C.

  I round the corner for the frozen-food aisle, where I see a familiar thinness. It is Professor Dich, my feminist-narrative teacher. I observe her holding two fat-free ice cream quarts. She appears to be comparing ingredients.

  Dich is pronounced like “peach,” not “pick,” but even so, she is thin. If she were wearing a spandex body suit, you would see only bone structure. While tenured male colleagues grow hairy and fat, female academics waste away. They appear strung out on coffee, diet pills, brains, cigarettes. Being a career intellectual, with books to raise and kids to write about, must be difficult work. In women like Ms. Dich, the flesh is a non-entity more than an object of denial. Yet here I find her, shopping for food.

  If I had courage, as a gentleman, I would share in her elbows and guide Madame Dich to the fat-full section of the store. There, I would treat her to a box of sweet cordials and a generous assortment of Swiss bars. Then we would break chocolate together and celebrate in life and sugar, good cholesterol and bliss. With my help, she could reclaim her fleshy self.

  She turns and sees me staring.

  “Andy?”

  “Professor Dich?”

  “Up late working?”

  “Just walking. How are you?”

  “Are you graduating?”

  “I think so.” I want to be her savior but as my professor, she secures the question mark. She eyes me as a doctor would a patient, but held fast by her left elbow, I see a brick of frozen dessert.

  I follow Dich over to the cashier, where an elderly man is waiting behind several skinhead youth. The septuagenarian’s baggy earth tones contrast sharply with the black denim and high boots of the bald townies. One defeats the barren land of his crown with a gleaming silver Mohawk, and another appears to have a pocket knife—at least a twelve-in-one model—stapled to his ear. Professor Dich reaches ahead for a mint toothpick. In passing, her elbow grazes ever so gently against the old man in front of us. He collapses, slamming nose first against the white linoleum floor. With the cashier and the leather types, we stand momentarily stunned, staring at the tragic turn of events, the smack in the face, of this man’s life.

  Upon entering the store, a small troupe of students sees the body and turns away; I hear them stifle faint giggles or sobs. I recognize one as a classmate.

  “Oh my god,” Dich whispers, her words as thin as her wrists.

  He appears to be in little or no agony. In fact, he is motionless. I bend down to check his pulse. There is one. I reach inside the breast pocket of his tan jacket and find his medical card. I hand it to the cashier. She dials the number on a phone usually reserved for credit-card problems. One of the townies produces a cell phone and calls the police.

  I turn back to Professor Dich and try to comfort her. “There’s no way you did that,” I say, trying to sound soothing. “He was bound to die. He probably smoked unfiltered cigarettes and ate red meat late at night.” The store owner nods as he pushes the fallen man’s cold cuts aside. He picks up a white-paper package that looks roast-beef sized; waving it with his right hand, he points at it with the thumb from his left.

  With the owner at Dich’s side, I say goodbye and escape. Outside it is drizzling an even mist. The squatter is still there; he holds up a sign. “Have you helped your homeless today?” I doubt it, and I wonder if the irony is intended. I feel ridiculous doing so, unsure if I am helping or hindering my homeless, but I toss a dull quarter and a few pennies into the fluorescent green flying disc lying flat at his feet.

  ***

  The air outside is cool and beautiful, a faint breeze like doggy breath. Back on the campus green, I twist and turn and stare at the stars. I run along the gravel track and do awkward handstands over the football field. I find myself staring at three young pines planted far away. They begin to move. I see John led as a prisoner by the two revolutionaries. No, it is the security guard leading the rock throwers away in handcuffs. No, it is John and Jake leading me away. Where could they be taking me? I run toward us with my head down, as fast as I can.

  Upon arrival, I see these are no men at all. They are women, the three witches, now in army jackets and peasant skirts, out scavenging. I try to give a friendly hello, but horror is painted on their faces. They mistake me for a bad man—out alone, looking for danger—and drop some items that they then scramble to pick up. Bundling the fallen goods in their skirts reveals hairy shins and pale bony knees. I squint at the ground and see oblong objects. Doorknobs, drumsticks, candy bars and soda cans. A stick shift from a car and plastic joysticks from the videogame room.

  One of them hisses at me, as spittle strands loom. “We protest the phallocentric regime. You tell a soul and we cut it off.”

  “It?”

  “It,” they gravely nod. And the leader waves a Ward public safety night stick at my nose.

  I turn and hurry away, gasping for air, checking my package. With so much to assimilate, these incidents are unsettling. I cannot say for sure if the night is real or largely hallucination. I wonder if the shrooms were acid-laced. In any event, they chase me all over cam
pus and then back to the source of the pain. The campus tower’s clock reads 5:03 a.m. The night sky fades into the lightness of day.

  I slow at her porch and ascend the wooden steps. I take a full breath and then ring the bell. She comes and opens the wooden door. Through the screen, I see her in a lavender night shirt. She rubs her eyes. Even half-asleep, she looks amazing.

  “Andy, is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I heard from Jake.”

  “Andy, I don’t love Jake.”

  “I know,” I whisper.

  She opens the screen door, grabs my shirt, and pulls me in.

  I am finally at rest, holding Jenna on her night blue futon. But before I can doze off, I am stuck with my thoughts. There are only so many drugs I can take to haze away reality. There’s only so much dog food I can feed myself until I know the truth. There’s only so much night wandering I can do until I go to sleep with Jenna, the girl Jake is dying for, but also a woman offering only a limitless land without love. I don’t want to betray anyone. I feel the weight of approaching sleep, and thank god for the chance to rest my weary soul.

  IV. Commencement

  Three weeks later, I am standing in a slight drizzle and a black and silver robe. We are a line of graduates here to please thousands of relatives and friends seated on wooden chairs where Licht was no doubt fast walking just hours ago. I can hear John on a cell phone; it sounds as if he is speaking in a panic, and I feel relieved it is in a language I cannot understand. I am happy to see he wears a graduation robe. At the least, they are letting him walk with his class. I avoid entirely any opportunity to meet Jenna’s family, and as far as I can tell she is doing the same. “You have my e-mail,” is how she ended our last scene. Soon enough, from the podium above, we hear the words of the Dean of Ward.

  “You young minds go out into a world of peace and prosperity. As the millennium approaches, there is no intercontinental war. The markets are surging. Optimism abounds. Make the most of it. Stretch your wings. You are the best and brightest minds of tomorrow. Do not waste your talent. Be the best you can be.”

  In a stentorian roar, the Dean actually says those last lines. Before I know it, I am following the black and silver line leading up to the podium. I’m stoned and in the rain and trying not to worry about the rest of my life.