The
Boy in the Tunnel
by
4.
Joanie lived in Mary Rutherford, directly across the quad
from Wintertree. Whereas its brother was a grey box, a blight on the UNWG landscape, Miss R (as the dormitory was
informally known) was an architectural treasure, an historical site with a
multitude of plaques and velvet-roped rooms. Robert E. Lee once recovered from
a case of botulism in Room 126; John F. Kennedy had once “written a speech” in
Room 235 (rumor had it he wrote more than a few speeches that night). And right
next door in 237, Joanie McKittrick
told her roommate about the boy in the tunnel.
“He’s not that cute,” she said. “I can’t tell if
he’s smart or not. He’s short. He doesn’t talk much.”
Joanie’s roommate
“Well, yeah, that’s the point. I don’t know.” Joanie picked at a flake of pink nailpolish
on her big toe. “He was in my Handbook.”
“Ah.”
“I was in his.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A lot.”
“A lot. So it doesn’t mean anything.” Joanie
picked up her Handbook from the table beside her bed and flipped it over—a small
mirror had been glued to the back cover. She tapped out a little of the black
powder onto the mirror, and drew it into two neat lines with her student ID
card.
“It means something. Maybe not
that we’re destined to be together forever or whatever, but I’ve got to at
least figure out what.” Joanie unscrewed the
end of a ballpoint pen and pulled out the ink cartridge, leaving a clear
plastic tube. She handed the tube to
“What it means is that this guy thinks you’re The
One because he read it in the stupid Handbook, and he’s going to do whatever it
takes to convince you that he’s The One for you. So watch out.”
After five seconds she returned to normal. She
handed the Handbook and pen tube to Joanie, and Joanie snorted the other line of powder. Joanie shook her head violently back and forth for five
seconds, then abruptly stopped.
“Life means nothing to the dead.”
*************
“Let me ask you boys a question. What exactly did
you think you were going to accomplish by fighting each other?” Residence Life
Coordinator Julian Washington was a big man, too big for the off-white office
in which he was interrogating Drew and Dick. He had wanted to remain involved
in campus life after college, but he was thinking more along the lines of
offensive-line coach than official glorified babysitter of Wintertree
Hall.
“I felt that Drew was not respecting my right to
practice my personal spiritual beliefs in my own personal way,” said Dick, with
as much pretend cultural sensitivity as he could muster. Dick’s older brother
had been an RA at UNWG, and he knew how this game was played.
“What I hear you saying is that you feel that Drew
infringed on your personal belief system,” said Julian. “Drew, how does this
make you feel?”
“He was making a mockery of the death of my Lord.”
“I hear and understand what you’re saying, Drew,
but I was merely trying to share my culture with you and learn more about our
differing heritages.” Dick was stabbing himself in the thigh with a pen to keep
from laughing as he spoke.
“Do you have a response to that, Drew?” Julian
yawned, silently counting exactly how many days were left until Christmas
break.
“Just because I’m from
“I just want to understand where you’re coming
from.”
“You told me you were Baptist.”
“And you’re Methodist. Two
different worlds.”
“No they’re not.”
Julian blinked and saw a brief vision of him
grabbing the two boys’ heads and smashing them together like ripe melons full
of juicy red flesh. “Here’s what I’m going to do, gentlemen. Since this is an
isolated incident—it better be—I’m going to throw out your RA’s write-up.”
“Very fair, sir.”
Julian wanted to plant a boot in the little shit’s
skull. “In return, Dick, you are going to accompany Drew to a worship service
of his choice, since you are so interested in learning about his beliefs. And
Drew, you will accompany Dick to a service of his choice.”
“But Dick doesn’t even—“
“We’re done here.”
Julian sent the grumbling residents out of his
office. He took a football from its stand atop a filing cabinet and spun it in
his hands. Fifty-three days more.
****************
Though Milo Kirby was (probably) just an urban
legend, there was decidedly more verisimilitude to the Nine Dead Men. At the
very least, their sigil was painted, chalked or carved all over campus: a dead
smiley face (two “X”es for eyes, a straight line for
a mouth) wearing a nine-pointed crown, known colloquially as King Milo the
Expired. Page 301 of the Handbook contained a detailed, though by no means
comprehensive, list of all the places on campus bearing the sigil, but Tim
preferred to seek them out without assistance, or to stumble upon them
accidentally. The most famous, of course, was the Founders’ Garden, which, when
viewed from, for example, a passing helicopter, formed a giant
green-yellow-and-gold King Milo.
Tim’s favorite King Milo, however, was the one
carved into the wooden divider between the two stalls farthest from the door in
the Thorn Hall third-floor men’s restroom. It wasn’t your typical
pocketknife-scratched rush job, but a detailed, polished bas-relief that
probably took many hours, some sort of chisel and a Dremel
Moto-Tool to finish. King Milo’s face had texture and
feeling, and the crown was ornately filigreed and either gold-plated or at
least painted. Eight smaller King Milos surrounded
the larger face, curving out in two arms, the whole thing forming a lumpy “S,”
lying on its side. The eight small
But what made this sigil special wasn’t the
artistry, though it was considerable, but the mural on the wall directly
opposite it: a heraldic shield, divided into four quadrants of purple, gold,
white and black. And not just divided by lines, but literally split into four
and exploded in a trompe l’oeil
3-D view, the four pieces of the shield appearing to burst out of the wall,
each one with the apparent mass and thickness of a solid chunk of iron.
Photorealistic renderings of Mary Rutherford, Hayes and Sluke
Halls were on the purple, gold and white quadrants, but the fourth sector was
completely black. An elephant and rhinoceros rampant stood to either side of
the exploded shield. Underneath the shield, “LIFE MEANS NOTHING TO THE DEAD”
was printed in burgundy script on a parchment scroll.
Behind and revealed by the exploded shield was a
miniature landscape more convincing than any he had ever seen: a verdant field
populated by hundreds of tiny elephants, rhinoceroses, ostriches and big cats
of every species. Snowcapped mountains rose in the background, but between the
field and the mountains was a city of ultramodern glass towers and Gothic
spires. It appeared to be night in the mountains, dusk in the city, but
For nearly a week, Tim had been visiting the
third-floor men’s room to sit in the last stall and contemplate the mural and
the relief, even on days when he had no classes in Thorn Hall. Sitting between
the two opposing sigils, he felt a sense of pulsing energy surrounding him, as
if he were sitting between two giant electromagnets. This was the same feeling
he captured sometimes on the perfect fall days—the feeling of being in the
middle of things, of being caught up in something important. It was the same
feeling that had compelled him to back up when he met Joanie
in the tunnel. “Potential” was the right word for it. “Possibility” was
another.
But there was also tension in this feeling, and
something underneath that, something dark and thick, like tar, the kind of
thing that could pull you in and not let go. The two sigils meant something, of
that Tim was sure, and they meant something in relation to each other. It was
competition, but it was more than that. The Nine Dead Men, whoever they were—if
they were anybody at all—had enemies. Or perhaps they were the enemies
themselves.
Tim wanted to see Joanie again.
© 2005 Gardner Linn