The
Boy in the Tunnel
by
19.
Joanie stayed a few minutes after her seminar to talk
with Professor Burton—he was impressed with her poetry but impressed with her
legs even more, and it creeped Joanie
out but she feigned obliviousness because he really was impressed with the
poetry and could help with recommendations to summer writers’ conferences—and
so when she left the classroom the first floor of Salley
Hall was empty again. It was empty in the way that only something that was
meant to be full could be empty. Joanie briefly
filled the space near the bulletin board that Tim had vacated and could feel
that absence as she scattered his particulate residue, that
sense that something was supposed to be here that wasn’t now.
Joanie saw the Milligan bus—on its last circuit of the
evening—pull up to the stop down the hill from Salley,
and she broke into a sprint down the steps to catch it so she wouldn’t have to
walk back to Miss R. In her haste she failed to notice the man reading an Ambassador on the steps, wearing a blue
sweater and whistling to himself. As she leapt down the steps three at a time,
he folded up his newspaper, stood up and calmly followed her, secure in the
knowledge that Greg, the Milligan bus driver, always took a break here to use
the Salley Hall men’s room, an oasis of luxury and
privacy compared to the urinal troughs back at the bus depot. And so sure
enough Joanie had to sit on the bus for three minutes
waiting for Greg, while the man in the blue sweater strolled on just as Greg
returned. He found a seat in the back, a few rows behind Joanie,
and opened his newspaper again.
**********************
Julian found a new suit in a closet off the
octagonal room, as well as a microwave and enough packaged food to last a few
months at least. He didn’t expect to be down here that long, but the man on the
phone hadn’t been too specific about how long this task would take. After
changing clothes and devouring a few Hot Pockets, Julian found, as instructed,
a hefty phone book, its cover purple and its pages a faded lavender. The first
step of his task was simply to find a listing in the Purple Pages, dial the
number, and deliver a five-word message. Easy as that.
Julian did not pause to reflect on why he felt
compelled to complete this task, or to wonder who the voice on the telephone
had belonged to. All he knew was that the request seemed perfectly reasonable
to him. Especially compared to the kind of shit Marston
was always asking of him. The voice on the phone had not asked him to go to the
Pi Floor and go down into some tunnel and nearly starve; Marston
had. The voice just wanted him to make a phone call. The voice had given him
new clothes and Hot Pockets. The voice was looking out for him. Repaying that
kindness was the least Julian could do.
Julian found the listing. He picked up the receiver
and dialed the number. After seven rings, someone answered, a young man’s
voice, wet and squelchy and oddly familiar. Julian spoke, slowly and clearly:
“The Quartermaster has a girlfriend.”
“Dude, what?” said the voice on the other end.
Julian hung up.
And so that was done.
************************
Drew looked up at Dick and shut the book and tried
to hide it but Dick had already seen it and was barging toward him, Neanderthal
forehead lowered rhino-style. He’s totally going to headbutt
me, Drew thought, and that just seemed so absurd that Dick planted his head in Drew’s chest before Drew could even formulate a response to
the concept. Drew tumbled backwards, between two of the stacks, and Dick came
with him, his head like magnetically stuck to Drew’s
chest, and Dick rolled all the way over Drew, his head the pivot point, and
nearly landed on his feet but stumbled and fell to his knees a few feet past
Drew. Just lucky he didn’t sit on my head, Drew thought, but then Dick was
already back up and raising his right Timberland-clad foot to stomp on Drew’s chest.
One thing that male cheerleaders are really good at
is holding on to people’s feet and lifting them up by the feet, so Drew was
ready for this and caught Dick’s boot in both hands six inches above his chest;
and then he twisted and pushed up and back, forcing Dick to the floor on his
face.
Drew rolled to his knee and up to his feet to face
the already-rising Dick. Drew was ready now. When he fought like he wanted to
fight, he could sort of narrate the fight in his head, like take himself out of
his body and call a play-by-play on the fight like it wasn’t actually him fighting.
Right now his internal narration consisted mainly of the thought that it was
really difficult to internally narrate a fight with a guy named Dick because
you just couldn’t avoid saying stuff like “Dick recovered quickly from the
blow” and it made you giggle like a sixth-grader or something, and in a fight
you had to focus or else you were going to get headbutted
again.
Dick charged Drew again, but Drew grabbed another
Handbook (WILLIAM ROWLAND) from the shelf and smacked Dick across the face with
it as he neatly sidestepped the charge. “Fuck!” said Dick, holding his bleeding
nose. Drew threw the book at Dick, and one of its corners hit his ear. “Fuck!”
Drew said “Let’s stop this, Dick,” but he really
didn’t want to. He was smiling at a whole laundry list of Dick-related double
entendres, he couldn’t help himself, and his smiling only made Dick madder.
Blood poured freely from Dick’s nose and into his mouth, grouting his teeth
with red. Drew wanted one of those teeth. He wanted to fuck up that mouth.
Drew took another book from the shelf and winged it
at Dick, just a warning shot, and Dick batted it away, just as Drew
anticipated—before Dick could get his hands back up to block, Drew slammed into
his stomach, knocking him back to the concrete floor. Dick clawed at Drew’s face, but Drew’s arms were
longer, and he got his left hand on Dick’s face, the heel of his hand pressing
against Dick’s slippery nose. Drew planted a knee in Dick’s crotch, and Dick
groaned.
“Let’s stop this, Dick,” Drew said, but he was
thinking about the best way to dislodge a tooth.
“Fugk” said Dick,
spitting blood. Drew grabbed another book from the shelf (IFER COLLINS) and
released Dick’s head. Dick of course raised his head, directly into the path of
the swinging Handbook in Drew’s right hand. Dick spit
up a gout of blood, but no tooth. Come on, tooth.
“Let’s stop this, Dick, for serious.” Drew brought
the book down again, the spine right on Dick’s upper lip. That should do it.
Dick tried to raise his head, but it just smacked
back against the concrete. More blood gurgled out of his mouth and ran in two
rivulets down his cheeks, painting a stringy, elongated clown mouth. Still no teeth.
“Come on, Dick. Work with me.” Drew had always
borne violence easily, worn it like a favorite jacket; he put it on and he was
invincible. It had served him well on the gridiron, where had blocked as much
as he had touched the ball, sprinting across field to explode into some hapless
linebacker or safety, enjoying the pain he received as much as the pain he
gave, doing it all for the team. Bruises were trophies, his or theirs. A
hand-lettered sign reading NO PAIN, NO GAIN had been nailed to the wall above
the fieldhouse door, for the players to tap with
taped fingers as they exited for the field, and Drew had taken that maxim quite
literally. All you had to do was accept violence into your life; you just had
to stop fighting it (ironically enough), and it would be there for you whenever
you needed it. You could take a break and let it run things for a little while.
Drew squeezed Dick’s cheeks,
making his lips fish out, so he could look at the teeth. None of them were even
loose. Dick’s hands flopped uselessly on the floor. His eyes were cloudy and
unfocused.
“Want a fucking tooth”
“Fugkhh”
Drew raised IFER COLLINS again for another try
(“another blow to Dick’s head,” har har) but before he could bring it down on Dick’s face the
phone rang. Drew, startled, dropped the book. He stared at the phone as it rang
a second time. Was it the same guy calling again, he wondered.
Dick blinked back into focus. He curled his fingers
into a fist and put that fist into Drew’s groin. Drew
folded, gasping, and fell off Dick. Dick struggled to his feet. The phone rang
again. Dick spat a wad of blood, with a molar like a nucleus at the center, on Drew’s cheek. He kicked Drew in the balls again, just to
make sure. The phone rang.
“Fuck” he said. The phone rang. Dick looked at the
phone. It rang. He staggered over to it. It rang. He answered it.
“Hello”
“The Quartermaster has a girlfriend,” a voice on
the other end said.
“Dude, what?” Dick said. The guy on the other end
hung up.
Dick looked at Drew, bent over on the floor, his
hands uselessly cradling his genitals, tears streaming from his eyes, wordless,
breathless gasps issuing from his mouth.
“Fag” said Dick, but his voice no longer had its
old conviction
Dick dropped the receiver, streaked with blood now.
All of a sudden he couldn’t stand up.
************************
The pain was starting to return, slowly at first,
but it sped up with each step. Dave had gotten a glimpse of his right hand five
minutes ago and he hadn’t liked what he’d seen, but by now he’d almost
forgotten what it looked like. In another five minutes the pain would be bad
enough for him to take another look. The pain felt like when you could see
somebody you recognized walking toward you from all the way across the quad;
you knew it was a friend, you knew you would eventually meet in the middle of
the quad and say hello, but for now you were too far away to acknowledge her,
so you just sort of focused on your feet or the trees or the leaves falling
from the trees as you both moved toward a place where there was enough privacy
in public to converse.
The pain was there, but he didn’t officially
recognize it yet.
It was
He was supposed to be there for the Ceremony by
The fly had finally died on the windowsill, Dave
right there with it, holding its hand, talking it into whatever came next. He
and the fly had become quite close there near the end, and he had promised the
fly he would carry out its dying wish. There hadn’t been a beer in the
mini-fridge after all.
Dave rounded Thorn Hall and hobbled toward the
Founders’ Garden and its cranial bench; he needed that bench now. The hand was just
begging him to look at it. It was ready to show itself to him. He just needed
to sit on the bench for a few minutes and look at the hand if he had to, but
just once, and then he had to forget it again so he could make it to Yarrow by
9:45 for the Ceremony, in which he, as Sergeant-at-Arms, was supposed to play
an important role; and also there was something else he had to do, something he
couldn’t remember right now but he was sure it would come to him if he could
just sit on the bench for a few minutes and look at the hand just once to
appease it and then he could go back to forgetting it.
Someone was already sitting on the bench. Someone short, a fashionless haircut on a
head too big for its body. He was sitting on the bench, staring out over
campus at the view of the Family Delmonico that
looked like the Living Creatures’ crest.
The left leg was just about to give up, just about
to make its displeasure known. Interloper or no, Dave had to sit down.
Tim saw the guy lurching toward him and shifted his
attention from the dorms’ quad. The dude’s left ankle was obviously broken, and
even from this distance Tim could tell something was wrong with his right hand.
He couldn’t see specifically why, but he could just tell it was injured, the
way he could always spot CGI people in movies; it didn’t move the way a human
thing moved.
The guy limped through the Garden gate and tottered
along the bark-covered path around King Milo’s face. It was clear now that he
wanted to sit on Tim’s bench. Tim wanted neither to relinquish the bench nor to
sit here with the (obviously deranged) limping guy in the blue blazer. But as
the dude (whom Tim, now that he could see his face, thought looked familiar,
the way local anchormen always looked familiar) zombied
his way closer to the bench, Tim’s hardwired desire to avoid conversations with
the physically impaired compelled him first to scoot as far to the right as the
bench would allow; and second, as he saw that this would afford him no more
privacy, to stand up and scan for the route that would take him out of the
Garden most quickly without having to cross paths with the cripple.
“You don’t have to leave,” Dave said. “I just need
to sit for a second.”
Tim hated this, the guilt such a simple statement
placed on him. Tim did not want to sit here with this guy or talk to this guy,
who probably had a really involved story about how he hurt his leg and also
probably wanted some money, but now the guy had let him know that he, Scary
Crippled Guy, knew that Tim did not want to talk to him, and he further knew
that his presence was forcing Tim away. But by acknowledging this fact, Limpy made it impossible for Tim to leave. If Tim left now,
he was the asshole who couldn’t sit and be pleasant and humane for five minutes
in the company of someone in obvious pain.
Tim sat back down, his right hip pressed against
the arm of the bench. Limpy collapsed on the bench
next to him. Tim tried not to stare, without making it seem like he was
ignoring him, but he couldn’t help stealing a glance at the guy’s hand—a glance
that became a stare as Tim saw how badly mangled it was, two fingers at right
angles to the others.
The guy looked at Tim, then
followed his gaze back down to his own hand. It was as if this was the first
time the guy had seen what had happened to his hand. His lips curled in
revulsion, a sneer of disgust and pity, mirroring Tim’s own expression, as if
the hand didn’t belong to him.
But a second later the pain finally finished its
crawl up Dave’s arm to his brain, and the full horror of the state of
impairment his hand was in hit him; and then the leg chimed in, and there was
nothing Dave could do but try to release the pain, get it as far away from him
as he could. Dave screamed, raw and sore, drawing Tim and the Garden and the
campus into the hot red world at the tips of his mutilated fingers.
© 2005 Gardner Linn